Rage

It was ten minutes before one of them called across to them, 'All right, come this way,' and they followed him up the paved road towards the security block.

The first glimpse that Vicky had of her husband after six months appalled her.

'You are so thin,' she cried.

'I have not been eating very well." He sat down on the stool facing her through the mesh of the screen. They had developed a cryptic code during the four visits she had been allowed at Pretoria Central, and not eating well meant that he was on another hunger strike.

He smiled at her and his face was skull-like so that his lips had retracted and his teeth were too big for his face. When he placed his hands on the shelf in front of him his wrists protruded from the cuffs of his khaki prison uniform and they were bone covered with a thin layer of skin.

'Let me see my son,' he said, and she drew Matthew to her.

'Greet your father,' she told the boy, and he stared solemnly at Moses through the grille. The gaunt stranger on the other side of the wire had never picked him up or held him on his lap, had never kissed or fondled him, had never even touched him. The mesh was always between them.

A warder sat beside Moses to see that the visiting rules were strictly observed. The time allowed was one hour, sixty minutes exactly, and only family matters could be discussed - no news of the day, no discussion of prison conditions and especially nothing with a political flavour to it.

One hour of family matters, but they used their code. 'I am sure that my appetite will return once I have news of the family,' Moses to1d her, 'on paper." So she knew that he was hunger-striking to be allowed to read the newspapers. Therefore he would not have heard the news about Nelson Mandela.

'The elders have asked Gundwane to visit them,' she told him.

Gundwane was their code name for Mandela. It meant 'cane rat' and the elders were the authorities. He nodded to show that he understood that Mandela had at last been arrested, and he smiled tautly.

The information he had given to Manfred De La Rey had been used effectively.

'How are the family members on the farm?" he asked.

'All is well, and they are planting their crops,' Vicky told him, and he understood that the Umkhonto we Sizwe teams working out of Puck's Hill had begun their campaign of terror bombings. 'Perhaps you will all be reunited sooner than we think,' she suggested.

'Let us hope so,' Moses agreed. A reunion would mean that the Puck's Hill team would join him here on the island, or take the shorter road to the gallows.

The hour passed too swiftly, and the warder was standing up.

'Time up. Say your goodbyes." 'I leave my heart with you, my husband,' Vicky told him, and watched the warder lead him away. He did not look back at her, and his gait dragged like that of an exhausted old man.

'It is only the starvation,' she told Joseph as they walked back to the ferry. 'He is still courageous as a lion, but weak from lack of food." 'He is finished,' Joseph contradicted her quietly. 'The Boers have beaten him. He will never breathe the air of freedom again. He will never see the outside of his prison again." 'For all of us, born black, this whole country is a prison,' Vicky said fiercely, and Joseph did not reply until they were once more aboard the ferry and running back before the gale, towards the flattopped mountain whose lower slopes were flecked with white walls and shining glass.

'Moses Gama chose the wrong road,' Joseph said. 'He tried to assault the walls of the white fortress. He tried to burn it down, not realizing that even if he had succeeded all he would have inherited would have been ashes." 'And you, Joseph Dinizulu,' Vicky flashed at him scornfully, 'you are wiser?" 'Perhaps not, but at least I will learn from the mistakes of Moses Gama and Nelson Mandela. I will not spend my life rotting in a white man's prison." 'How will you assault the white man's fortress, my clever little brother?" 'I will cross the lowered drawbridge,' he said. 'I will go in through the open gates, and one day the castle and its treasures will be mine, even if I have to share a little of them with the white man. No, my angry little sister, I will not destroy those treasures with bombs and flames. I will inherit them." 'You are mad, Joseph Dinizulu." She stared at him, and he smiled complacently at her.

'We shall see who is mad and who is sane,' he said. 'But remember this, little sister, that without the white man we would still be living in grass huts. Look to the north and see the misery of those countries :whites. No, my sister, I will keep the w. bite ae will work for me, not I for him." son." Hendrick Tabaka leaned forward and P .... Raleigh's shoulder. 'Your anger will destroy you. Your enemy oo strong. See what has happened to Moses Gama, my own brother. See what is the fate of Nelson Mandela.

They went out to fight the lion with bare hands." 'Others are still fighting,' Raleigh pointed out. 'The warriors of Umkhonto we Sizwe are still fighting. Every day we hear of their brave deeds. Every day their bombs explode." 'They are throwing pebbles at a mountain,' Hendrick said sadly.

'Every time they explode a little bomb against the pylon of a power line, Vorster and De La Rey arm another thousand police and write another hundred banning orders." Hendrick shook his head. 'Forget your anger, my son, there is a fine life for you at my side. If you follow Moses Gama and Mandela, you will end the way they have ended - but I can offer you wealth and power. Take a wife, Raleigh, a good fat wife and give her many sons, forget the madness and take your place at my side." 'I had a wife, my father, and I left her at Sharpeville,' Raleigh said. 'But before I left her, I made a vow. With my fingers deep in her bloody wounds, I made a vow." 'Vows are easy to make,' Hendrick whispered, and Raleigh saw how age had played like a blowtorch across his features, withering and searing and melting the bold lines of his cheekbones and jaw.

'But vows are difficult to live with. Your brother Wellington has also made a vow to the white man's god. He will live like a eunuch for the rest of his life, without ever knowing the comfort of a woman's body. I fear for you, Raleigh, fruit of my loins. I fear that your own vow will be a heavy burden for all your life." He sighed again. 'But since I cannot persuade you, what can I do to ease the rocky pathway for you?" 'You know that many of the young people are leaving this country?" Raleigh asked.

'Not only the young ones,' Hendrick nodded. 'Some of the high command have gone also. Oliver Tambo has fled and Mbeki and Joe Modise with many others." 'They have gone to set the first phase of the revolution afoot." Raleigh's eyes began to shine with excitement. 'Lenin himself taught us that we cannot move immediately to the communist revolution.

We must achieve the phase of national liberation first. We have to create a broad front of liberals and churchmen and students and workers under the leadership of the vanguard party. Oliver Tambc has gone to create that vanguard party - the anti-apartheid movemenl in exile - and I want to be part of that spearhead of the revolution.

'You wish to leave the country of your birth?" Hendrick stared all him in bewilderment. 'You wish to leave me and your family?" 'It is my duty, Father. If the evils of this system are ever to be destroyed, we will need the help of that world out there, of all the united nations of the world." 'You are dreaming, my son,' Hendrick told him. 'Already that world, in which you place so much trust and hope, has forgotten Sharpeville. Once again money from the foreign nations, from America and Britain and France, is pouring into this country. Every day the country prospers --' 'America has refused to supply arms." 'Yes,' Hendrick chuckled ruefully. 'And the Boers are making their own. You cannot win, my son, so stay with me." 'I must go, my Father. Forgive me, but I have no choice. I must go, but I need your help." 'What do you want me to do?" 'There is a man, a white man, who is helping the young ones to escape." Hendrick nodded. 'Joe Cicero." 'I want to meet him, Father." 'It will take a little time, for he is a secret man, this Joe Cicero." It took almost two weeks. They met on a municipal bus that Raleigh boarded at the central depot in Vereeniging. He wore a blue beret, as he had been instructed, and sat in the second row of seats from the back.

The man who took the seat directly behind him lit a cigarette and as the bus pulled away, said softly, 'Raleigh Tabaka." Raleigh turned to look into a pair of eyes like puddles of spilled engine oil.

'Do not look at me,' Joe Cicero said. 'But listen carefully to what I tell you --' Three weeks later Raleigh Tabaka, carrying a duffel bag and authentic seaman's papers, went up the gangplank of a Dutch freighter that was carrying a cargo of wool to the port of Liverpool. He never saw the continent disappear below the watery horizon for he was already below decks at work in the ship's engine room.

Scan did the deal at breakfast on the last day of the safari. The client owned seventeen large leather tanneries in as many different states and half the real estate in Tucson, Arizona. His name was Ed Liner and he was seventy-two years of age.

'Son, I don't know why I want to buy myself a safari company.

I'm getting a little long in the tooth for this big game stuff,' he grumbled.

'That's bullshit, Ed,' Sean told him. 'You nearly walked me off my feet after that big jumbo, and the trackers all call you Bwana One-Shot." Ed Liner looked pleased with himselfú He was a wiry little man with a ruff of snowy hair around his brown-freckled pate. 'Give me the facts again,' he invited. 'One last time." Sean had been working on him for three weeks, since the first day of the safari, and he knew Ed had the figures by heart, but he repeated them now.

'The concession is five hundred square miles, with a forty-mile frontage on the south bank of Lake Kariba --' As he listened, Ed Liner stroked his wife as though he were caressing a pet kitten.

She was his third wife and she was just two years younger than Sean, but fifty years younger than her husband. She had been a dancer at the Golden Egg in Vegas, and she had a dancer's legs and carriage, with big innocent blue eyes and a curling cloud of blond hair.

She watched Sean with a vicious little curl to her cupid-bow lips as he made his pitch. Sean had been working on her just as assiduously as he had on her husband, thus far with as little success.

'All you've got, honey,' she had told Sean, 'is a pretty face and a hungry dick. The woods are full of those. Daddy Eddie has got fifty million bucks. It's no contest, sonny boy." The camp table was set under a magnificent wild fig tree on the banks of the Mara river. It was a bright African morning. The plain beyond the river was golden with winter grass, and studded with flat-topped acacia trees. The herds of wildebeest were dark shadows on the gold and a giraffe was feeding from the upper branches of the nearest acacia, his long graceful neck swaying against the brittle blue of the sky, his hide paved with bold rectangles of red brown. From up-river there came the bellowing sardonic laughter of a bull hippo, while from the branches of the fig tree above them the golden weaver birds dangled upside down from their woven basket nests, fluttering and shrilling to entice the drab brown females to move in and take up residence. Legend had it that both Hemingway and Ruark had camped at this very spot and breakfasted beneath this same wild fig.

'What do you think, Sugar Sticks. Ed Liner ran his bony brown fingers down the inside of his wife's thighú She wore wide-legged khaki culottes and from where Sean sat he could see a little re, blond pubic curl peeking out from under the elastic of her panties 'Do you think we should give old Sean here a half million bucks t set up our very own safari outfit down in the Zambezi valley o Rhodesia?" 'You know best, Daddy Eddie,' she affected a cute little-girl voice and she batted her long eyelashes at him and turned so that he: bosom strained the buttons of her khaki shirt.

'Just think of it,' Sean invited. 'Your very own hunting concession to do with as you want." He watched her carefully as he went on 'You could shoot the full quota all yourself if you wanted, as many animals as you wanted." Despite her curls and pouting lips, Lan Liner had as vicious a sadistic streak as any man Sean had ever hunted with. While Ed had chosen only to take the lion and elephant that he had paid for, Lana had killed every single animal she was entitled to.

and then had killed those her husband had refused.

She was a passable shot, and derived as much pleasure from cutting down one of the dainty little Thompson's gazelle with her .300 Weatherby magnum as she had when she dropped her black-maned Masai lion with a perfect heart shot. He had seen the sexual radiance in her immediately after each kill, heard her rapid breathing and seen the pulse beat in her throat with excitement, and his philanderer's instinct had assured him that Lana Liner was vulnerable to him only in those few minutes after she had seen the bullet strike and the blood flash.

'As much hunting as you want, whenever you want it,' Sean tempted her, and saw the excitement in her baby blue eyes.

She ran the tip of her, tongue over her scarlet lips and said in her breathless little-girl voice, 'Why don't you buy it for my rthday, Daddy Eddie." 'Goddamm!" Ed laughed. 'Why not! Okay, son, you've got yourself a deal. We'll call it Lana Safaris. I'll get my lawyers to draw up the papers soon as we get home to Tucson." Sean clapped his hands, and shouted at the kitchen tent. 'Maramba! Letta champagne hapa. Pacey! Pacey!" and the camp waiter in his long white kanza and red pill-box fez brought the green bottle on its silver tray, dewed with cold from the refrigerator.

They drank the wine and laughed in the morning sunlight, and shook hands and discussed the new venture until the gunbearer brought the hunting car around with the rifles in the racks and Matatu, the Ndorobo tracker, perched up on the back and grinning like a monkey.

'I've had enough,' Ed said. 'Guess I'll get packed up and ready to meet the charter plane when it comes in this afternoon." Then he saw the pout of disappointment on Lana's red lips. 'You go off with Sean, Sugar Sticks,' he told her. 'Have a good hunt, but don't be late back.

The charter flight is due to arrive at three, and we must get back to Nairobi before dark." Sean drove with Lana in the seat beside him. He had cut the sleeves out of his shirt to leave his upper arms bare, and they were sleek and glossy with muscle. Dark chest hair curled out of the vee neck of the shirt, and he wore his shining dark hair in a page-boy almost to his shoulders, but bound up around the forehead with a patterned silk bandana to keep it out of his eyes.

When he grinned at her, he was almost impossibly handsome, but there was a vindictive twist to his smile as he said, 'Ready for a bit of sport, sport?" And she said. 'Just as long as I get to do the shooting, sonny boy." They followed the track along the river bank, heading back towards the hills. The Land-Rover was stripped and the windshield removed, and Matatu and the gunbearer in the raised back seat scanned the edges of the riverine bush and searched the track for sign of passage during the night.

Alarmed by the engine beat, a bushbuck family came dancing up the bank from the river, heading for the dense cover with the ewe and the lamb leading, and the ram, striped and spotted with cream on a dark chocolate ground, his corkscrew horns held high.

'I want him,' Lana cried and reached over her shoulder for the Weatherby.

'Leave him,' Sean snapped. 'He won't go fifteen inches and you've got a better trophy already." She pouted at him sulkily, and he ignored her as the bushbuck scampered into the bush. Sean hit four-wheel drive and angled the Land-Rover down the bank of one of the Mara's tributaries, splashed and jolted through water as deep as the hubs and then roared up the far bank.

A small herd of Burchell's zebra cantered away ahead of them, stiff black manes erect, their vivid stripes shaded to nondescript grey at a distance, uttering their abrupt honking bark. Lana eyed them hungrily, but she had already shot the twenty zebra allowed on both her and Ed's licences.

The track swung back towards the river and through trees they had a view across the wide plains. The Masai Mara, which meant the great spotted place of the Masai, and the grassland were blotched with herds of game and clumps of acacia.

'Bwana,' Matatu cried, and at the same instant Scan saw the sign.

He braked the Land-Rover and with Matatu beside him went to examine the splashes of khaki-green dung and the huge round bovine prints in the soft earth of the track. The dung was loose and wet and Matatu thrust his forefnger into one of the pats to test for hod heat.

'They drank at the river an hour before dawn,' he said.

Sean walked back to the Land-Rover and stood close to Lana.

almost touching her as he said, 'Three old bulls. They crossed three hours ago, but they are feeding and we could catch them within an hour. I think they are the same three we saw the day before yesterday." They had spotted the dark shapes in the dusk, from the opposite bank of the wide Mara river, but with insufficient daylight left for them to circle upstream to the ford and take up the chase. 'If they are the same old mud bulls, one of them is a fifty-incher, and there aren't many of them that size around any more. Do you want to have a go?" She jumped down from the Land-Rover, and reached for the Weatherby in the gun rack.

'Not that popgun, Sugar Sticks,' Sean warned her. 'Those are big mean old buff out there. Take Ed's Winchester." The .458 threw a bullet more than twice as heavy as the 200-grain Nosier that the Weatherby fired.

'I shoot better with my own piece than with Ed's cannon,' Lana said. 'And only Ed is allowed to call me Sugar Sticks." 'Ed is paying me a thousand dollars a day for the best advice on Harley Street. Take the .458, and is it all right if I call you Treacle Pins, then?" 'You can go screw, sonny boy,' Lana said and her baby voice gave the obscenity a strangely lascivious twist.

'That' exactly what I had in mind, Treacle Pins, but let's go kill a buff first." She tossed the Weatherby to her gunbearer, and strode away from him with her hard round buttocks oscillating in the khaki culottes.

'Just like the cheeks of a squirrel chewing a nut,' Sean thought happily, and took the big double-barrelled Gibbs down from the rack.

The spoor was gross, three big bull buffalo weighing over a ton each and scarring the earth with brazen hooves and grazing as they went. Matatu wanted to run away with it, but Sean checked him. He didn't want to bring Lana up to the chase shaking and panting with fatigue, so they went out on it at an extended walk, going hard but keeping within the girl's capabilities.

In the open acacia forest they reached the spot where the bulls had ceased feeding and bunched up, then struck determinedly towards the blue silhouette of distant hills, and Sean explained to Lana in a whisper, 'This is where they were when the sun rose. As soon as it was light, they headed for the thick stuff. I know where they will lie up, we'll catch them with another half hour." Around them the forest closed in, and acacia gave way to the dense claustrophobic thorn and green jess. Visibility ahead dropped to a hundred and then fifty feet, and they had to crouch beneath the interlacing branches. The heat built up, and the dappled light was deceptive, filling the forest with strange shapes and menacing shadow. The stink of the buffalo seemed to steam around them in the heat, a rank gamy smell, and they found the flattened beds and smeared yellow dung where the bulls had lain down for the first time, and then stood up and moved on.

Ahead of them Matatu made the open-handed sign for 'Very close', and Sean opened the breech of the Gibbs and changed the big brass .577 Kynoch cartridges for two others from his bullet pouch. He kept the original pair between the fingers of his left hand, ready for an instant reload. He could fire those four cartridges in half the time it would take even the most skilled rifleman to fire four from a magazine rifle. It was so silent and still in the jess that they could hear each other breathe, and the blood pounding in their own ears.

Suddenly there was a clatter, and they all froze. Sean recognized the sound. Somewhere just ahead of them a buffalo had shaken his great black head to drive away the plaguing flies, and one of his curved horns had struck a branch. Sean sank on to his knees signalling Lana to come up beside him, and together they crawled forward.

Suddenly and unexpectedly they came to a hole in the jess, a tiny clearing twenty paces across, and the earth was trodden like a cattle kraal and littered with pancakes of old black dung.

They lay on the edge of the clearing and peered across into the tangled vegetation on the far side. The sunlight into the clearing dazzled them, and the shadow beyond it was confused and obscure.

Then the bull shook his head again, and Sean saw them. They were lying in a bunch, a mountainous mass of blackness in the shadows, and their heads overlapped so that the heavy bosses and curls of horn formed an inextricable puzzle. Though they were less than thirty paces away, it was impossible to separate one animal from the others, or one set of horns from the bunch.

Slowly Sean turned his head and laid his lips against Lana's ear. 'I am going to get them up,' he whispered. 'Be ready to take the shot as I call it." She was sweating and trembling. He could smell her fear and excitement, and it excited him also. He felt his loins thicken and stiffen, and for a moment he savoured the sensation, pressing his hips against the earth as though he had her body under him. Then deliberately he knocked the brass cartridges in his left hand against the steel barreb of the Gibbs. The sharp metallic sound was shocking in the silence.

Across the clearing the three bulls lumbered to their feet, and faced the sound. Their heads were lifted, drooling wet muzzles held high and the bosses of rough horn, black as ironstone, joined above theiI vicious piggy little eyes, the tips curving down and up again to the wide points, and their ears flared like trumpets.

'The middle one,' Sean said softly. 'Rake him through the chest." He stiflened in anticipation of her shot, and then glanced sideways.

The barrel of the Weatherby was describing small erratic circles as Lana tried to hold her aim, and it flashed upon Sean that she had forgotten to change the power of her variable telescopic sight. She was looking at a bull buffalo from thirty paces through a lens of ten multiplications. It was like looking at a battleship through a microscope: all she was seeing was a black shapeless mass.

'Don't shoot!" he whispered urgently but the Weatherby erupted in a long blazing muzzle-flash across the clearing, and the big bull lurched and tossed his head, grunting to the strike of shot. Sean saw the dried mud puff from his scabby black skin, low down in the joint of. his right shoulder, and as the bull spun away into the jess, Sean swung the Gibbs on him to take the back-up shot. But one of the other buffalo turned across the wounded animal, screening him for the instant that it took for him to crash away into the jess, and Sean lifted the Gibbs without firing.

They lay side by side and listened to the thunderous rush of bodies dwindle into the jess.

'I couldn't see clearly,' Lana said in her childish piping treble.

'You had the scope on full power, you dilly bitch." 'But I hit him!" 'Yes, Treacle Breeches, you hit him - more's the pity. You broke his right front leg." Sean stood up and whistled for Matatu. In a few quick words of Swahili he explained the predicament, and the little Ndorobo looked at Lana reproachfully.

'Stay here with your gunbearer,' Sean ordered Lana. 'We'll go and finish the business." Tm going with you." Lana shook her head.

'This is what I'm paid for,' Sean told her. 'Cleaning up the mess.

Stay here and let me do my job." 'No,' she said. 'It's my buff. I'll finish it." 'I haven't got time to argue,' Sean said bitterly. 'Come on then, but do as you are told,' And he waved Matatu forward to pick up the blood spoor.

There were bone splinters and hair where the bull had stood.

'You smashed the big bone,' Sean told her. 'It's a racing certainty that the bullet broke up. At that range it was probably still going 3500 foot per second when it hit - even a Nosier bullet can't stand that." The bull was bleeding profusely. Bright blood had sprayed the jess as he blundered through, and blood had formed a dark gelatinous puddle where he stood for the first time to listen for his pursuers.

The other two bulls had deserted him and Sean grunted with satisfaction. That would prevent confusion, shooting at the wrong animal in the mix-up.

Lana kept close beside him. She had removed the scope from the Weatherby and left it with the gunbearer, and now she carried the rifle at high port across her chest.

Abruptly they stepped into another narrow clearing, and Matatu squeaked and bolted back between Sean and the girl as the bull broke from the far side of the clearing and came down on them in a bizarre crabbing sideways gait. His nose was up, and the long mournful droop of his horns gave him a funereal menace. His broken leg flapped loosely, hampering his gait, so he rocked and plunged, and bright blood was forced in a spurting stream from the wound by the movement.

'Shoot!" said Sean. 'Aim at his nose!" But without looking at her he sensed her terror, and her first movement as she turned to run.

'Come on, you yellow bitch. Stand and shoot it out,' he snarled at her. 'This is what you wanted - now do it." The Weatherby whiplashed, and flame and thunder tore across the clearing. The buffalo flinched to the shot, and black flinty chips flew from the boss of his horns.

'High!" Sean called. 'Shoot him on the nose. 'And she shot again, and hit the horn a second time and the bull kept coming.

'Shoot!" Sean called, watching the great armoured head over the express sights of the Gibbs. 'Come on, bitch, kill him!" 'I can't,' she screamed. 'He's too close!" The bull filled all their existence, a mountain of black hide and muscle and lethal horn, so close that at last he dropped his head to toss and gore them, to rip and trample and crush them under the anvil of his crenellated boss.

As the massive horns went down, Sean shot him through the brain and the bull rolled forward over his own head. Sean pulled Lana out from under the flying hooves as the bull somersaulted. She had dropped the rifle and now she clung to him helplessly, shaking, her red mouth slack and smeared with terror.

'Matatu!" Sean called quietly, holding her to his chest, and the little Ndorobo reappeared at his side like a genie. 'Take the gunbearer with you,' Sean ordered. 'Go back to the Land-Rover and bring it back here, but do not hurry." Matatu grinned lewdly and ducked his head. He had an enormou respect for his Bwana's virility and he knew what Sean was going t do. He only wondered that it had taken so long for the Bwana t, straighten this pale albino creature's back for her. He disappearel into the jess like a black shadow and Sean turned the girl's face up to his own and thrust his tongue deeply into the wet red wound o her mouth.

She moaned and clung to him, and with his free hand he unbucklec her belt and jerked down the culottes. They fell in a tangle arount her ankles and she kicked them away. He hooked his thumbs mt( the waistband of her panties and tore them off her, then he pusher her down on top of the hot and bleeding carcass of the buffalo. She fell with her legs sprawled open and the muscles of the dead anima were still twitching and contracting from the brain shot, and the sweet coppery smell of blood mingled with the rank wild stink of game and dust.

Sean stood over her and tore open the front of his breeches and she looked up at him with the terror still clouding her eyes.

'Oh you bastard,' she sobbed. 'You filthy rotten bastard." Sean dropped on his knees between her long loose limbs and cupped his hands under her hard little buttocks. As he lifted her lower body he saw that her fluffy blond mount was already as sodden as the fur of a drowned kitten.

They drove back to camp with the body of the dead bull crammed into the back of the Land-Rover, the great horned head dangling over the side, and Matatu and the gunbearer perched upon it, singing the hunter's song.

Lana never said a word all the way back. Ed Liner was waiting for them under the dining tent, but his welcoming grin faded as Lana threw her torn panties on the table in front of him and piped in her little-girl voice, 'You know what, naughty old Sean did, Daddy Eddie?

He raped your little girl, that's what he did - he held her down and stuck his big dirty thing into her." Sean saw the fury and the hatred in the old man's faded eyes, and he groaned inwardly. 'The bitch,' he thought. 'The sneaky little bitch.

You loved it. You screamed for more." Half an hour later Lana and Ed were in the red and silver Beechcraft Baron when it took off from the narrow bush strip. As it banked away on course for Nairobi, Sean glanced down at his own trouser front.

'Well okay, King Kong,' he murmured. 'I hope you are satisfied, that just cost us fifty thousand dollars an inch." He turned back to the Land-Rover still shaking his head sadly as he picked up the bundle of mail that the pilot of the Beechcraft had brought down from the office in Nairobi. There was a yellow cable envelope on top of the pile and he opened it first.

'I am marrying Holly Carmichael on 5th August. Please be my best man. Love. Garry." Sean read it through twice, and Lana and Ed Liner were forgotten.

'I'd love to see what kind of bag would marry Garry,' he chuckled.

'Pity I can't go home --' he broke off and thought about it. 'But why not! Why the hell not! Living dangerously is half the fun." Shasa Courtney sat at his desk in the st_udy at Weltevreden, studying the Turner on the opposite wall as he composed the next paragraph in his mind.

He was drafting his Chairman's Report for the cabinet select committee of Armscor. The armaments company had been set up by special act of parliament, and the strict secrecy of its operations was ensured by that act.

When President Eisenhower had initiated the arms embargo against South Africa as a punitive reaction to the Sharpeville massacre and the racial policies of the Verwoerd government, the country's annual expenditure on weapons manufacture had been a mere œ300,000. Four years later they had an annual budget of half a billion.

'Dear old Ike did us a big favour." Shasa smiled now. 'The law of unforeseen consequences in action again, sanctions always backfire.

Now our biggest worry is to find a testing ground for our own atomic bomb." He addressed himself once more to that section of his report, and wrote: Taking into consideration the foregoing, I am of the opinion that we should adopt the third option, i.e. underground testing. With this in view, the corporation has already conducted investigations to determine the most suitable geological areas. (See attached geological survey reports.) The shot holes will be drilled by a commercial diamond drilling company to a depth of four thousand feet to obviate contamination of the underground water supplies.

There was a knock on the door and Shasa looked up in angry disbelief. The entire household knew that he was not to be disturbed, and there was no reason nor excuse for this intrusion.

'Who is it?" he barked, and the door was opened without his permission.

For a moment he did not recognize the person who stepped into the study. The long hair and deep tan, the flamboyant costume - the gilet of kudu skin, and the bright silk scarf knotted at the throat, the mosquito boots and cartridge belt were all unfamiliar. Shasa stood up uncertainly.

'Sean?" he asked. 'No, I don't believe this is happening." He wanted to be angry and outraged. 'Damn it, Sean, I warned you never--' but he could_not go on, his joy was too ' - ú intense ana his voice petere--& out.

'Hello Dad." Sean came striding towards him, and he was taller and more handsome and self-assured than Shasa remembered. Shasa abhorred all manner of theatrics and affectation of dress, but Sean wore his costume with such panache that it appeared natural and correct.

'What the hell are you doing here?" Shasa found his voice at last, but there was no rancour in his question.

'I came as soon as I got Garry's cable." 'Garry cabled you?" 'Best man - he wanted me to be his best man, and I didn't even have a chance to change." He stopped in front of Shasa, and for a moment they studied each other.

'You are looking good, Pater,' Sean smiled, and his teeth were white as bone against the tan.

'Sean, my boy." Shasa lifted his hands, and Sean seized him in a bear hug.

'I thought about you every single day--' Sean's voice was tight and his cheek was pressed to Shasa's cheek. 'God, how I missed you, Dad." Shasa knew instinctively that it was a lie, but he was delighted that Sean had bothered to tell the lie.

'I've missed you, too, my boy,' he whispered. 'Not every day, but often enough to hurt like hell. Welcome back to Weltevreden." And Sean kissed him. They had not lissed since Sean was a child, that sort of sentimental display was not Shasa's usual style, but now the pleasure of it was almost unbearable.

Sean sat t Centame s right hand at dinner that evening. His dinner a ' ' jacket was a little tight around the chest and smelled of moth balls, but the servants, overjoyed to have him home, had pressed razor edges into the crease of his trousers and steamed out the silk lapels. He had shampooed his hair, and oddly the thick glossy locks seemed to enhance rather than detract from his over-powering masculinity.

Isabella, taken by surprise like everybody else, had come drifting downstairs, dressed for dinner with her shoulders and back bare, but her cool and distant poise had evaporated as she saw Sean. She squealed and rushed at him.

'It's been so boring since you went away!" She wouldn't let go of his arm until they went in to dinner, and even now she leaned forward to watch his lips as he talked, her forgotten soup cooling, avid to take in every word. When Shasa at the end of the table made a remark about Kenyan barbers and Sean's hair style, she rushed to her eldest brother's defence.

'I love his hair like that. You are so antediluvian sometimes, Papa.

He's beautiful. I swear if Sean ever cuts a single hair on his beautiful head, I will take vows of silence and chastity on the spot." 'A consummation devoutly to be prayed for,' murmured her father.

Centaine, although less effusive, was as delighted as any of them to have Sean home again. Of course, she knew every detail of the circumstances in which he had left. She and Shasa were the only ones in the family who did, but that had been almost six years ago, and things could change in that time. It was difficult to believe that anybody who looked like that, even more beautiful than her own beloved Shasa, and who was possessed of such charm and natural grace, could be entirely bad. She consoled herself that although he had made a few mistakes when he was a child, he was now a man.

Centaine had seldom seen more of a man, and she listened as attentively as the rest of them to his stories and laughed as merrily at his sallies.

Garry kept repeating, 'I didn't really believe you'd come. I sent that cable on an impulse. I wasn't even sure of your address." And then to Holly, who was sitting beside Sean at the long table, 'Isn't he wonderful, Holly - isn't he everything I told you?" Holly smiled and murmured polite agreement, and twisted slightly in her chair to prevent Sean pointing up the story he was telling by placing his hand on her thigh again. She glanced around the table, and caught Michael's eye. He was the only one who was not following Sean's tale with total concentration. Holly had only met Michael for the first time the previous day, when he arrived from Johannesburg for the wedding, but the two of them had found an immediate rapport, which had swiftly deepened as Holly had discovered Michael's protective concern and affection for Garry.

Now Michael raised an eyebrow at Holly, and smiled an apology at her. He had seen his elder brother looking at her, he had seen through Sean's devices to attract her attention, and had even seen her start and pale as Sean touched her beneath the table. He would talk to Sean after dinner, and quietly warn him off, for Garry himself would never see what was happening. He was too besotted by his ú elder brother's return. It was up to Michael - it had always been his duty to protect Garry from Sean. In the meantime he smiled reassu once at Holly, and Sean intercepted the look and interpreted it acc rately. He showed no reaction. His expression was frank and ape and his voice sparkling and full of humour as he finished the stoi and the others all laughed, all except Michael and Holly.

'You are so funny,' Isabella sang. 'I just hate you for being m brother. If only I could find another boy who looked like you." 'There's not one of them good enough for you, Bella,' Sean saic but he was watching Michael, and as the laughter subsided, he asked, lightly, 'And so, Mickey, how is life on that commie newspaper c yours? Is it true that you are going to change its name to the ANt Times, or is it the Mandela Mail or the Moses Gama Gazette?" Michael laid down his knife and fork and met Sean's gaz squarely.

'The policy of the Golden City Mail is to defend the helpless, t( attempt to secure a decent dignified existence for all, and to tell th truth as we see it - at any cost." 'I don't know about that, Mickey,' Sean grinned at him. 'But couple of times out there in the bush I've wished that I had a copy all the Golden City Mail with me - yes, sir, every time I run out of toilel paper, I wish I had your column right there." 'Sean!" Shasa said sharply, and his indulgent expression faded for the first time since Sean's arrival. 'There are ladies present." 'Nana." Sean turned to Centaine. 'You have read Mickey's column, haven't you? Don't tell me you agree with those bright pink sentiments of his?" 'That's enough,' Shasa said sternly. 'This is a reunion and a celebration." 'I'm sorry, Pater." Sean was mock contrite. 'You are right. Let's talk about fun things. Let me tell Mickey about the Mau Mau in Kenya, and what they did to the white kids. Then he can tell me about his commie ANC friends here, and what he wants them to do to our kids." 'Sean, that's not fair,' Michael said softly. 'I am not a communist, and I have never advocated communism or the use of force--' 'That's not what you wrote in yesterday's edition. I had the great and glorious privilege of reading your column on the plane down from Jo'burg." 'What I actually wrote, Sean, was that Vorster and De La Rey between them are making the mistake of labelling as communist everything that our black population sees as desirable - civil rights, universal franchise, trade unions and black political organizations such as the ANC. By naming these as communist-inspired they are making the idea of communism highly attractive to our blacks." 'We've just got a black government in Kenya, with a convicted terrorist and murderer as the new head of state. That's why I'm getting out and moving to Rhodesia. And here is my own beloved brother paving the way for another black Marxist government of rabble-rousers and bomb-throwers right here in the good old Republic. Tell me, which of the terrorists do you fancy for president, Mickey, Mandela or Moses Gama?" 'I won't warn either of you again,' Shasa told them ominously. 'I will not abide politics at the dinner table." 'Daddy is right,' Isabella joined in. 'You are both being so utterly dreary - and just when I was beginning to really enjoy myself." 'And that's enough from the peanut gallery also,' Centaine picked out Isabella. 'Eat your food please, Mademoiselle, you are all skin and bones as it is." But she was studying Sean.

'He has been home six hours and already we are all at each other's throats,' she thought. 'He still has a talent for controversy. We must be wary of him - I wonder why he really came home." She found out very soon after dinner, when Sean asked to see her and Shasa in the gun room.

After Shasa had poured a tiny glass of Chartreuse for her, and balloon 'snifters of Hennessy for Sean and himself, they all settled down in the leather chairs. The men went through the ritual of preparing their cigars, cutting the tips and warming and finally lighting them with the cedarwood tapers.

'All right, Sean,' Shasa said. 'What did you want to talk to us about?" 'You know how we discussed the safari business, Pater, just before I left?" Shasa noticed how he showed no contrition as he mentioned his enforced departure. 'Well, I've had six years of experience now, and I won't offend you with false modesty. I'm one of the top hunters in the business. I've a list of over fifty clients who want to hunt with me again. I have their telephone numbers, you can ring them and ask them." 'All right, I will,' Shasa said. 'But go on." 'Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia is developing the safari business there. One of the concessions they are putting up for auction in two months' time is a plum." Shasa and Centaine listened in attentive silence, and when Sean finished almost an hour later, they exchanged a significant glance. They understood each other perfectly after thirty years of working so closely, and they did not have to speak to agree that Sean had made a virtuoso performance. He was a good salesman, and his figures added up to the promise of rich profits, but Shasa saw the little shadow at the back of his mother's dark eyes.

'Just one thing perturbs me a little, Sean. After all these years you come breezing in again - and the first thing you do is ask for half million dollars." Sean stood up and strolled across the gun room. The carved tus hung above the stone fireplace, the central position in the roan pride of place amongst all Shasa's own hunting trophies.

Sean studied it for a moment, and then turned back slowly to fac them.

'You never wrote to me once in all those years, Pater. That's a right, I understand why. But don't accuse me of not caring. I thougI about you and Nana every day I was away." It was cleverly done. H did not mention the tusk on the wall, and Centaine could have swor there were genuine tears just at the back of his marvellously gree clear eyes. She felt her doubts soften and begin to dissolve.

'My God, how can any woman resist him,' she thought. 'Even hi own grandmother!" She looked across at Shasa and was amazed t, see that Sean had shamed him. Neatly and adroitly he had shiftel guilt and Shasa had to cough and clear his throat before he couh speak.

'I must admit it sounds interesting,' he said gruffly. 'But you'l have to speak to Garry." 'Garry?" Sean asked in surprise.

'Garry is the director in charge of new projects and investments, Shasa told him and Sean smiled.

He had just knocked together two of the toughest, shrewdest head in the business. Garry would be a piece of cake.

Holly Carmichael's father was the Presbyterian minister of a smal parish in Scotland, and he and his wife flew out to Africa quite determined to see their daughter decently married, and to pay lo the privilege.

x Centaine took him for a ride around the estate and explained kindly that only by being very selective could she restrict her guest list to under a thousand. 'Those are just family friends, and our most important business and political associates. Of course it does not include the workers here on Weltevreden or the employees of Courtney Mining and Finance who will be accorded their own separate festivities." The Reverend Carmichael looked stricken.

'Madam, I love my daughter - but a clergyman's stipend--' 'I don't really like to mention it,' Centaine went on smoothly, 'but it is Holly's second marriage - and you have already done your duty with the first. I would be grateful if you would consent to perform the ceremony, and let me take care of the other small details." With one deft stroke Centaine had procured a clergyman to marry her grandson, for despite veiled offers to install stained-glass windows and restore church roofs, both the local Church of England and Anglican priests had refused to perform the offices. At the same time she had achieved a free hand with the wedding arrangements.

'It will be,' she promised herself, 'the wedding of the decade." The old slave church on the estate had been rethatched and restored for the occasion, and the bougainvillaea blossom of exactly the shade that Holly had chosen for her dress was flown down from the eastern Transvaal in the company aircraft to decorate it. The rest of the ceremony and the following celebrations were arranged on the same scale and with similar attention to detail with all the resources of Weltevreden and the Courtney group of companies to carry them through.

The church could seat only 150, and twenty of those were the coloured family retainers from the estate who had known and cared for Garry since the day of his birth. The other thousand guests waited in the marquee on the polo field and the ceremony was relayed to them over the public address system.

The road down the hill from the church to the polo field was lined with the other estate workers whose seniority and length of service were insufficient to procure them a seat in the church. They had stripped Centaine's rose garden of blooms and they showered Garry and his new bride with rose petals as they led the procession down the hill in the open carriage, and the women danced and sang and tried to touch Holly for luck as she went by.

In his grey topper Garry stood taller than Holly and his bulk of shoulder and chest made her seem light as a cloud of pink mist beside him, so lovely that the guests gasped and hummed with admiration as he brought her into the marquee on his arm.

The best man's speech was one of the highlights of the afternoon.

Sean had them roaring and squealing with laughter and clapping his most amusing sallies, although Holly frowned and reached for Garry's hand under the table when Sean made oblique references to Garry's stutter and his Charles Atlas course.

Sean was the first to dance with Holly after she and Garry had circled the floor in the wedding waltz. He held her close as they turned together and murmured, 'Silly girl, you could have had the pick of the litter, but, never fear, it's still not too late." 'I did and it is,' she replied, and her smile was cold and thorny.

'Now why donit you go off and give my bridesmaids the benefit of your charms. The poor things are panting like puppy dogs." Sean turned the rebuff with a light laugh and handed her over to Michael for the rest of the dance. While he snapped his fingers at one of the waiters to bring him another glass of champagne, he surveyed the tent from the vantage point of the raised dais, picking out the interesting females, making his selections not only on the basis of their looks but on their apparent availability. Those who sensed his scrutiny and blushed or simpered or boldly returned his regard went immediately to the head of his list.

In passing he noticed that Isabella had finally got around Nana, and was wearing one of those mini-skirts that were all the rage. The hem finished just below the creases of her cheeky little buttocks, and with the impartial eye of the connoisseur he saw that her legs were quite extraordinary, and that every man, no matter what his age, glanced down at them as she circled the dance floor.

Thinking of Nana, he looked around for her quickly. Her seat at the high table was empty. Then he found her. She was near the back of the tent, sitting at a table with a big burly man who had his back turned to Sean. They were in earnest conversation, and his grandmother's intensity interested him. He knew that Centaine never wasted effort on the trivialities. The man must be important. As he thought that, the man turned slighty and Sean recognized him. His heart skipped guiltily. It was the minister of police, Manfred De La Rey. He was the one who had quashed the charges against Sean, in return for his guarantee to leave the country and never return.

Sean's instinct was to slip away without drawing De La Rey's attention to himself and then he grinned at his own stupidity. He had just stood up and made a dashing speech in front of them all.

'How's that for drawing attention?" he thought, and then grinned again at his own daring. 'Living dangerously is half the fun,' he reminded himself, and jumped down off the dais without spilling a drop of champagne and deliberately sauntered across the tent towards his grandmother and her companion.

Centaine saw him coming and placed her hand on Manfred's sleeve. 'Careful, here he come now." It had just taken all her influence, a recital of all the debts and secrets between them, to protect Sean, and now here was the impudent young devil flaunting himself in front of Manfred.

She tried to warn him off with a frown, but Sean stooped and kissed her cheek. 'You are a genius, Nana, there has never been a party like this. The planning and the eye to detail - we are all proud of you!" He hugged her and though she pushed him off haughtily saying, 'Now don't be a big booby,' her frown was displaced by the ghost of a smile. 'Damn it, he's got the cheek of all the Courtneys,' she thought proudly, and then turned to Manfred.

'You don't know my grandson. Sean, this is Minister De La Rey." 'I've heard of you,' Manfred growled without offering to shake hands. 'I've heard a great deal about you." And with relief Centaine turned to the couple who were returning to the table from the dance floor. 'And this is Mrs De La Rey and her son Lothar - all old friends of the family. Heidi, may I present my grandson Sean." Sean bowed over her hand, and Heidi considered him thoughtfully and said in her lisping German accent. 'He is the only one of your grandchildren I have not met, Centaine. A fine boy." Sean turned to Lothar and held out his hand. 'Hello. I'm Sean and if I didn't know who you were, I'd be the only one in the country.

Your play against the Lions on the last tour was magical, that boot of yours is worth a million rand." The two young men sat down on a pair of empty chairs and were immediately engrossed in a discussion of rugby football and the recent visit of the British team. Although she continued her conversation with Manfred, Centaine watched her two grandsons covertly. Apart from their youth and self-assurance, they were so different in appearance, one blond and Germanic, the other dark and romantic, yet she sensed that they were in other ways very similar.

Strong men, untroubled by unnecessary scruples, men who knew what they wanted and how to go about getting it. Perhaps they inherited that from her, she smiled to herself, and perhaps like her they were hard and unrelenting adversaries, prepared to destroy anything that stood in their way.

Centaine had the trick of listening to two conversations at once and she heard Lothar De La Rey say, 'Mind you, I've heard about you also and what you did in Kenya. Didn't you get a citation for the George Cross for cleaning up the last of the Mau Mau gangs?" Sean laughed. 'My timing was wrong. The Brits couldn't give me a gong for shooting Mickey Mice at the same time as they were handing the country over to Kenyatta. Not really cricket, you know, old boy. But how did you find out about that?" 'It's my job to know these things,' Lothar told him, and Sean nodded.

'Yes, of course, you are in the police. Aren't you a major or something?" 'As of last week, a colonel in the bureau for state security." ongratulaUons.

'You know, anything you could tell us about Mau Mau will be useful. I mean the real first-hand stuff about anti-terrorist work.

You see, I think we might have the same problem here one of these days." 'Well, the worst was over by the time I got there, but yes, of course - anything I can do. I'm going back up north in a fe weeks, to Rhodesia. But if I can help--' 'Rhodesia." Lothar dropped his voice so that Centaine couldn longer hear. 'That's interesting. We'd like to know what's going o there also. Yes, I think it is vital that we get together before yo leave. A man like you in place could be of really crucial help to us -Lothar broke off. His expression changed and he stood up huJ riedly, looking over Sean's shoulders.

Following his gaze Sean looked around and Isabella stood clos behind him. She draped one hand languidly over Sean's shouldeJ and leaned one hip against him, but she was watching Lothar.

'This is Bella, my baby sister,' Sean told Lothar, and Isabell murmured, 'Not such a baby any more, big brother." She had nc taken her eyes off Lothar's face.

She had first noticed him in the church during the ceremony and recognized him immediately. He was one of the most famous athlete in the country, a national heart-throb. Sean's conversation with bin had given her the opportunity she had been waiting for.

Despite the fact that her voice was cool and her manner aloof am distant, Sean felt her tremble against him and he grinned inwardly 'Your ovaries are going off like fire crackers, little sister." But hid, said, 'Why don't you sit down and bring a little sunlight into ou drab existence, Bella?" She ignored him and spoke directly to Lothar. 'Do you spend all your time dressed up in a rugby jersey, pushing people around ir scrums and kicking little balls? Or somewhere along the line did yot learn to dance, Lothar De La Rey?" 'Ouch!" Sean murmured. Even for a Courtney, that was pretty direct. And Lothar inclined his head and asked gravely, 'May I have the pleasure of this dance, Isabella Courtney?" They made one circuit of the floor without speaking and then Lothar said, 'If you were my woman, I would not allow you to wear a skirt like that." 'Why? Don't you like my legs?" she asked.

'I like your legs very much indeed,' he replied. 'But if you were my woman, I would not like other men to look at them the way they are doing now." 'You are a prude, Lothar De La Rey." 'Perhaps, Isabella Courtney, but I believe there is a time and a place for everything." She pushed a little closer to him and thought happily to herself, 'So let's find that time and place, you big gorgeous hunk of brawn." Morosely Manfred watched his son on the dance floor and his wife leaned across and echoed his thoughts.

'That hussy is throwing herself at Lothie. Just look at her, showing everything she has. I wish I could go and pull her away from him-' 'I wouldn't do that, skat,' Manfred advised soberly. 'Nothing could make her more attractive to him than our disapproval. But don't worry, Heidi. We have brought him up the right way. He might have a little man's sport with her, but that's not the kind of girl he will bring home." He stood up heavily. 'Trust our boy, Heidi. But now you must forgive me. I must talk to Shasa Courtney - it's very important." Shasa in full morning dress, a white carnation in his buttonhole, the black patch over one eye and a long black cheroot between his teeth was in deep conversation with the groom, but when he saw Manfred approaching and recognized the seriousness of his mien, he slapped Garry's shoulder lightly and said, 'I think it's a good bet,' but you listen to what Sean has to say. Make up your own mind, then come and discuss it with me,' and then he left Garry and came to meet Manfred.

'We must talk - privately,' Manfred greeted him.

'Now?" Shasa looked incredulous, but Manfred insisted.

'It will not take long." 'Let's go up to the house." Shasa took his arm, and chatting amiably led him to the exit, as though they were going off to the men's room together. As soon as they were outside the marquee, they headed for the carpark behind the grandstand.

Manfred prowled around Shasa's gun room, restlessly peering at the framed photographs of hunting safaris, at the mounted animal heads and the racks of sporting rifles and shotguns in their glass fronted cabinet, while Shasa slouched in one of the armchairs and ú watched him patiently, letting him take his time, puffing on the black cheroot.

'Is this room secure? We cannot be overheard?" Manfred asked, and Shasa nodded.

'Perfectly secure. I do much of my private business here - besides which, the house is deserted. Every last servant is down at the polo field." 'Ja, nee, goed!" Manfred came to take the armchair facing Shasa.

'You cannot go off to England as you planned,' he said, and Shasa laughed.

'Why on earth not?" 'I will tell you why." Manfred assured him, but made no attempt to do so. Instead he asked, 'Did you ever see a film called The Manchurian Candidate?" He pronounced it in the Afrikaans fashion 'ri-lien'.

For a moment Shasa was surprised by the irrelevance of the question. Then he replied, 'No, I didn't get around to the movie, but ] did read the book by Richard Condon. Rather enjoyed it, to tell the truth." 'Do you remember the story-line?" 'Yes. It was about a plot to assassinate one of the American presidential candidates." 'That's right,' Manfred nodded. 'The assassin was hypnotized and programmed to respond to the sight of a playing card, one of the aces, I think." 'Ace of spades,' Shasa agreed. 'The death card. He would respond like an automaton to any command he received after he had seen the ace. In a hypnotic trance he was ordered to carry out the assassination." 'Do you think the idea was credible? Do you think a man could be completely subjected to the hypnotic suggestion of another?" 'I don't know,' Shasa admitted. 'The Koreans and the Russians are supposed to have perfected the technique of brainwashing. Perhaps it is possible, in special circumstances, with a particularly susceptible subject - I don't know." Manfred sat in silence for so long that Shasa began to fidget.

Then he spoke curtly, 'Our jobs are in danger,' he said, and Shasa went very still. 'Ja." Manfred nodded heavily. 'Verwoerd is thinking of reshuffling the cabinet. You and I will be sacked." 'You have done a difficult job,' Shasa said softly. 'And you have done it as well as was humanly possible. The storm is over, the country is calm and stable." Manfred sighed. 'Ja, you also. In a few short years since Sharpeville, you have helped rally the economy. Foreign investment is pouring in, thanks to your efforts. The value of property is higher than it was before the crisis. You have done an excellent job building up the armaments industry. Very soon our own atomic bomb - but we are going to be sacked. Myinformation is always reliable." 'Why?" Shasa asked, and Manfred shrugged.

'Verwoerd took two bullets in the head. Who knows what damage that caused." 'He shows no signs of any permanent damage. He is just as logical, rational and decisive after the operation to remove the bullets." 'Do you think so?" Manfred asked. 'Do you think his obsession with race is logical and rational?" 'Verwoerd was always obsessed with racial matters." 'No, my friend, that is not so,' Manfred contradicted him. 'He didn't want the ministry of Bantu affairs when Malan first offered it to him. Race meant nothing to him. He was concerned only with the growth and survival of Afrikaner nationalism." 'He certainly threw himself into it body and soul, when he did take the job,' Shasa smiled.

'Ja, that's true, but then he saw apartheM as uplifting to the blacks, a chance to conduct their own affairs, and become masters of their own destiny. He saw it as exactly similar to the partition of India and Pakistan. He was concerned with racial differences, but he was not a racist. Not in the beginning." 'Perhaps." Shasa was dubious.

'Since those bullets in the head he has changed,' Manfred said.

'Before that he was strong-willed and certain of his own infallibility, but since then he will brook not the slightest criticism or even a hint that anything he says or does might be wrong. Race has become an obsession, to the point of lunacy - this business with the coloured English cricketer, what is his name again?" 'Basil D'Oliveira - and he is South African. He plays for England because he can't play for South Africa." 'Ja, it's madness. Now Verwoerd even refuses to have a black servant to tend him. He would not attend the film version of Othello because Laurence Olivier had painted his face black. He has lost all sense of proportion. He is going to undo all the hard painstaking work we have done to restore calm and prosperity. He is going to destroy this country - and he is going to destroy us personally, you and me, because we have stood up to some of his wilder excesses in cabinet. You even suggested he permanently abolish the pass laws he has never forgiven you for that. He calls you a liberal." 'All right, but I can't believe he would take the ministry of police away from you." 'That is what he plans. He wants to give it all to John Vorster combine justice and police into a single portfolio and call it "Law and Order", or some such other title." Shasa stood up and went to the cabinet at the end of the room.

He poured two large cognacs and Manfred did not protest when he placed one of them on the table at his elbow.

'You know, Shasa, for a long time now I have had a dream. I've never told anybody about it, not even Heidi, but I will tell you. I dreamed that one day I would be the prime minister, and that 'you, Shasa Courtney, would be the state president of this country of ours.

The two of us, Englishman and Afrikaner, side by side as South Africans." They sat quietly and thought about it, and Shasa found himself becoming angry at being cheated of that honour. Then Manfred went off at another tangent.

'Do you know that even though the Americans are refusing to sell us arms, we still cooperate very closely with their CIA on all matters of intelligence that affect our mutual interests in southern Africa?" Manfred asked, and although Shasa could not fathom this new change of direction, he nodded.

'Yes, of course, I know that." 'The Americans have just interrogated a Russian defector in west Berlin. They passed on some of the intelligence to us. There is a Manchurian Candidate in place, and his target is Verwoerd." Shasa gaped at him. 'Who is the assassin?" 'No." Manfred held up his hands. 'They don't know. Even though the Russian was highly placed, he did not know. All he could tell the Americans was that the assassin has access to the prime minister, and he will be used soon, very soon." He picked up the cognac glass, and swirled the oily brown liquid around the crystal bowl. 'There was one other small clue. The assassin has a history of mental illness, and he is a foreigner, not born in this country." 'With that information it should be possible to identify him,' Shasa mused. 'You could check every single person who has access to the P.M." 'Perhaps,' Manfred agreed. 'But what we must decide - here in secret, just the two of us - is do we really want to find the Manchurian Candidate and stop him. Would it be in the best interest of our country to prevent the assassination?" Shasa spilled the cognac down the lapels of his morning jacket, but he did not seem to notice. Aghast, he was staring at Manfred.

After a long pause, he set down his glass, drew a silk handkerchief from his inner pocket and began to mop the spilled liquor.

'Who else knows about this?" he asked, concentrating on his cleaning, not looking up.

'One of my senior officers. He is the liaison with the military attach at the American embassy, who is the CIA man here." 'No one else?" 'Only me - and now you." 'Your officer is trustworthy?" 'Completely." At last Shasa looked up. 'Yes, now I see why I should cancel my trip to London. If something should happen to Verwoerd, it would be essential for me to be here when his successor is chosen." He lifted his glass in a salute, and after a moment Manfred returned the gesture. They drank the silent toast, watching each other's eyes over the rims of the crystal glasses.

There were only two couples left on the dance floor, and except for the band and the servants who were cleaning up and stacking the chairs, the marquee was empty.

At last the coloured band-master descended from the stand and approached Sean diffidently. 'Master, it's after two o'clock already." Sean glared at him over the head of the girl he was dancing with, and the man quailed. 'Please, Master, we've been playing since lunchtime, nearly fourteen hours." Sean's thunderous expression changed dramatically into that radiant boyish smile of his. 'Off you go then! You have been just great - and this is for you and your boys." He tucked a crumpled wad of banknotes into the band-leader's top pocket, and called to the other couple.

'Come on, gang. We are off to Navvies." Isabella had her face pressed to Lothar's shirt front, but she looked up brightly.

'Oh goody!" she cried. 'I've never been there. Nana says it's sordid and disreputable. Let's go!" Sean had borrowed Garry's MG and Isabella raced him in her new Alfa Romeo, and managed to keep up with him through the curves of the mountain drive. They were neck and neck as they tore down Buitenkant Street to the notorious Navigator's Den in the Bo-kaap area near the docks.

Sean had purloined two bottles of whisky from the bar in the marquee, and his partner was draped around his neck.

'Let's carouse,' he suggested, and pushed his way through the cluster of seamen and prostitutes who crowded the entrance to the nightclub.

The interior was so dark that they could only barely make out the band, and the music was so loud that they had to sit close and yell at each other.

'You are a marvelous brother,' Isabella shouted and leaned across to kiss Sean. 'You don't preach to me." 'It's your life, Bella baby, you enjoy it - and call me if anybody tries to stop you." She perched on Lothar's knee and nuzzled his neck. Sean's partner had collapsed, and he laid her out full length on the padded bench, with her head in his lap, while he and Lothar sat with their shoulders touching and talked seriously. The music blanketed their voices, so that from farther than a few feet nobody could overhear them.

'Do you know that you still have a rather prominent billing in the police files?" Lothar asked.

'It does not come as any great surprise,' Sean admitted.

'You don't mind taking a chance, do you?" Lothar smiled. 'I like your nerve." 'From what I know and see, I'd say that you are a fairly nerveles customer yourself,' Sean grinned back at him.

'I could make sure that your file disappeared,' Lothar offered.

'In exchange for a little something or other, no doubt?" 'Naturally,' Lothar agreed. 'You get nothing for nothing." 'And all you get for a pinch of dung is a cloud of flies,' Seal laughed, and refilled the whisky glasses. 'What do you want fran me?" 'If you were to act as an intelligence agent for the bureau for stat.

security - our man in Rhodesia - we might forget about your littl indiscretions." 'Why not?" Sean agreed instantly. 'Anything for a laugh and livin dangerously is half the fun." 'Do stop being so boring, you two,' Isabella cried, strokin Lothar's cheek. 'Come and dance with me." Sean's partner sat up groggily and blurted, 'I'm going to be sick/ 'Emergency,' said Sean. He hauled her to her feet and hustled heJ through to the tiny women's room.

There were two other females fussing over the single wash han basin, and they squealed demurely.

'Don't worry about us, ladies." Sean pushed his partner into the cubicle and aimed her at the toilet bowl. Noisily she got shot of who!

was troubling her and then straightened up and grinned at him shakily. Tenderly he wiped her mouth with a wad of toilet paper.

'How are you feeling?" 'I feel better now." 'Good, let's go somewhere and ball." 'Okay,' she said, perking up miraculously. 'That's what I've been waiting for the whole evening." Sean stopped beside Lothar and Isabella on the crowded floor.

'We are cutting out of here - something just came up, if you will pardon the expression." 'I'll call you at Weltevreden' some time tomorrow,' Lothar said.

'Just to arrange the details." 'Don't make it too early,' Sean advised and grinned at his sister.

'See you later, Bella Bunny." 'For God's sake, don't say "Be good!"' Isabella pleaded.

'Perish the thought." Sean picked up his partner and carried her down the stairs.

Isabella made one more circuit of the floor, just to let Sean get clear, then she murmured, 'That's enough dancing for one night let's go." Lothar had never seen a woman drive with Isabella's skill and flair. He relaxed in the passenger seat and watched her. Despite the long day and its excesses, she was still dewy fresh as a rosepetal and her eyes were clear and sparkling.

She was the first English girl he had ever been with, and her free and forthright manner at once appalled and intrigued him. With their strict Calvinist upbringing Afrikaner girls would never make themselves so available or behave with such abandon. Yet although she shocked him more than a little, she was without any doubt the most strikingly lovely girl he had ever met.

Isabella drove straight through the intersection of Paradise Road and Rhodes Drive.

'You've missed the turn to Weltevreden,' he pointed out, and she gave him a brief impish grin.

'That's not where we are going. From here you are in my hands, Lothar De La Rey." They followed the coastal road from Muizenberg around the bay, through the deserted streets of Simonstown, the British naval base, and then on towards the tip of the continent.

Where the road skirted a high cliff above the sea, Isabella pulled the Alfa off the road and cut the engine.

'Come on,' she ordered, took his hand and led him to the edge of the cliff. The dawn was turning the eastern sky to lemon and orange, and far beneath them the cliffs were folded upon themselves to form a sheltered bay. 'It's so beautiful here,' Isabella whispered. 'One of my favourite places." 'Where are we?" Lothar asked.

'It's called Smitswinkel Bay,' she told him, and led him by the hand to the start of the steep pathway that descended the cliff.

At the bottom a narrow horse-shoe of silver sand surrounded the bay, and above the beach a few locked and shuttered shacks were crammed against the foot of the cliff. The dawn light filtered down, soft and pearly, and the waters of the bay glowed with the misty sheen of moonstones.

Isabella kicked off her shoes and walked down to the water's edge, and then without looking round at him she slipped her dress off her shoulders and let it drop to the sand. Beneath it she wore only a pair of silk and lace panties. For a long moment she stood staring out across the bay and her back was long and shaped like the neck of a lovely vase, the beads of her spine just showed beneath skin that was pale and lustrous as mother-of-pearl. Then she stooped to pull the panties down to her ankles, and stepped out of them.

She was naked and Lothar's breathing caught in his throat as he watched her walk slowly down to the water's edge, her hips rolling in time to the lazy pulse of the ocean. She walked out until she was waist-deep and she lowered herself until only her head was above the surface. Then she turned and looked back at him. The challenge and the invitation were as clear as if she had called them aloud.

Lothar undressed as unhurriedly as she had done. Naked, he walked into the bay and she rose to meet him, the waters streaming from her bare shoulders down her breasts, and she lifted her arms and placed them around his neck.

She teased him with her tongue, letting him explore the warmth and softness of her mouth, and she gave a little purring chuckle as she felt how much he wanted her.

The sound goaded him and he lifted her in his arms and carried her out beyond her depth. She was forced to cling to him, and her body was weightless. He handled her like a doll and she offered no resistance. His strength seemed limitless - it made her feel helpless and vulnerable, but she was grateful for his patience. To hurry now would spoil it all. She wanted this to be something far beyond the frenzied groping and often painful thrusting that was all she had been offered by the three or four college lads she had allowed this far.

She learned quickly that he could tease as well as she could, and he let her float around him, light as the buoyant kelp in the gentle swell of the ocean while he stood foursquare and refused to make the final assault. In the end it was she who succumbed to impatience.

In contrast to the cool water that eddied around her, he was like a flaming brand buried deep in her body. She could not believe the hardness and the heat, and she cried aloud with incredible delight.

None of the others had been anything like this. From now on this was all that counted, this was what she had been searching for all along.

Still clinging together they waded ashore, and by now it was full morning. They bundled up their clothes and still naked she led him to the last shack in the row. While she searched for the key in her purse, he asked, 'Who does this belong to?" 'It's one of Daddy's hiding places. I only discovered it quite by chance and he doesn't know tlat I have a key." She got the door open and led him into the single room.

'Towels,' she said, and opened one of the cupboards. They made a game out of drying each other, but the light-hearted mood changed quickly to serious intent, and she dragged him to the bunk against the wall.

'Where I come from the man does the asking,' he chuckled.

'You are an old-fashioned chauvinist prude,' she told him.

As she clambered up onto the bunk he saw that her bottom was still bright pink from the cold waters of the bay; he found that peculiarly endearing and he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of tenderness towards her.

'You are so gentle,' she whispered. 'So strong and yet so gentle." It was mid-morning before they felt hungry, and dressed only in one of her father's old fishing jerseys, Isabella raided the larder for their breakfast.

'How do you fancy smoked oysters and asparagus with your baked beans?" 'Won't your father miss you?" he asked as he opened the cans.

'Oh, Daddy is a push-over. He will believe anything I tell him. It's my grandmother we have to watch out for, but I've arranged with one of my girlfriends to cover for us." 'Ah, so you knew where we were going to end up?" he asked.

'Of course." She rolled her eyes at him. 'Didn't you?" They sat cross-legged on the bunk with the plates on their laps and Isabella tasted the mixture. 'It's ghastly,' she gave her opinion, 'if I wasn't starving I wouldn't touch it." 'Of course, you will see your mother while you are in London?" he asked, and the loaded spoon stopped half-way to Isabella's mouth.

'How did you know I was going to London - and how did you know my mother was there?" 'I probably know more about your mother than you do,' Lothar told her, and she replaced the spoon on her plate and stared at him.

'For instance?" she challenged.

'Well, for instance, your mother is a rabid enemy of this country.

She is a member of the banned ANC and of the anti-apartheid group.

She associates regularly with members of the South African Communist Party. In London she runs a safe house for political refugees and escaped terrorists." 'My mother?" Isabella shook her head.

'Your mother was deeply implicated in the plot to blow up the houses of parliament and assassinate most of the members of the House, including the prime minister - and your father and my father." Isabella was still shaking her head, but he went on expressionlessly, watching her with those golden leopard eyes.

'She was directly responsible for the death of her own father, your grandfather, Colonel Blaine Malcomess. She was an accomplice of Moses Gama who is now serving a life sentence for terrorism and murder, and if she had not escaped she would probably be in jail with him." 'No,' said Isabella softly. 'I don't believe it." She was amazed and distressed by the change in him. Minutes before he had been so gentle, now he was hard and cruel, wounding her with words as he went on, 'For instance, did you know that your mother was Moses Gama's lover, and that she bore him a son? Your ?. i half-brother is an attractive coffee colour." 'No!" Isabella recoiled, shaking her head in disbelief.

'How do you know all this?" 'From the signed confession of Moses Gama, the man himself. I can arrange for you to see a copy, but that is not really necessary.

You will almost certainly meet your bastard half-brother in London.

He is living there with your mother. His name is Benjamin Afrika." Isabella jumped up and carried her plate to the kitchenette. She dumped the food into the garbage bin and without looking around, she asked, 'Why are you telling me all this?" 'So that you will know your duty." 'I don't understand." She still would not look at him.

'We believe your mother and her associates are planning some sort of violent action against this country. We are not sure what it is.

Any information on their activities would be invaluable." Isabella turned slowly and stared at him. Her face was pale and stricken.

'You want me to spy on my own mother?" 'We simply would like to know the names of the people you meet in her company while you are in London." She was not listening. She cut in on what he was saying.

'You planned this. You picked me out, not because you thought I was attractive or sweet or desirable. You deliberately set out to seduce me, just for this." 'You are beautiful, not attractive. You are magnificent, not sweet,' he said.

'And you are a bastard, a ruthless heartless bastard." He stood up and went to where his clothes hung behind the door.

'What are you going to do?" she demanded.

'Get dressed and go,' he told her.

'Why?" 'You called me a bastard." 'You are." Her eyes were glutted with tears. 'An irresistible bastard.

Don't go, Lothar, please don't go." Isabella was relieved when her father told her that he was unable to fly to London with her and Michael. Meeting her mother again after all these years, and after what Lothar had told her, would be difficult enough, without her father there to complicate matters and confuse her feelings. She had, indeed, tried to beg off going to London herself.

She wanted to, be close to Lothar, but he had been the one who insisted she make the trip.

'I will be back in Johannesburg and we wouldn't see much of each other anyway,' he told her. 'And besides that you have your duty and you have given me your word." 'I know Daddy would give me a PR job with the company in Jo'burg. I could get a flat and we could see lots of each other, I mean lots and lots!" 'When you come back from London,' he promised.

There were representatives from South Africa House and the London office of Courthey Mining to meet Isabella and Michael at Heathrow and a company limousine to take them to the Dorchester.

'Pater always overdoes it by a mile,' Michael remarked, embarrassed by the reception. 'We could have taken a taxi." 'No point in being a Courtney, unless you get to enjoy it,' Isabella disagreed.

When Isabella was shown up to her suite which looked out over Hyde Park, there was an enormous bouquet of flowers waiting for her with a note: Sorry I can't be with you, darling. Next time we will paint the town bright scarlet together.

Your old Dad.

Even before the porter had brought her bags up, Isabella dialled the number that Tara had given her and she was answered on the third ring.

'This is the Lord Kitchener Hotel, may I help you?" It was strangely nostalgic to be greeted by an African accent in a strange city.

'May I speak to Mrs Malcomess, please?" In her letter Tara had warned her that she had reverted to her maiden name after the divorce.

'Hello, Mater." Isabella tried to sound natural when Tara came on the line, but Tara's delight was unrestrained.

'Oh Bella darling, where are you? Is Mickey with you? How soon can you get here? You have got the address, haven't you? It's so easy to find." Isabella tried to match Michael's enthusiasm and excitement as they drove through the streets of London and the taxi-driver pointed out the landmarks they passed, but she was in a funk at the prospect of seeing her mother again.

It was one of those rather seedy little tourist hotels in a side street off the Cromwell Road. Only part of the neon sign Was lit. 'The Ord Kitch', it flashed in electric blue, and on the glass of the front doo were plastered the emblems of the AA and Routiers and a blaze o credit card stickers.

Tara rushed out through the glass doors while they were stil paying off the taxi. She embraced Michael first, which gave Isabell a few moments to study her mother.

She had put on weight, her backside in the faded blue jeans wa: huge, and her bosom hung shapelessly in the baggy man's sweater.

'She's an old bag." Isabella was appalled. Even though Tara hoc never gone to any pains with her appearance, she had always had or air of freshness and neatness. But now her hair had turned grey, ant she had obviously made a half-hearted attempt to henna it back to it original colour, and then given up. The grey was streaked brassy ginger and violent mulberry red, and it was twisted up into a careless, bun at the nape of her neck from which parti-coloured wisps hoc escaped.

Her features had sagged almost to obscure the bone structure whicl: had been one of her most striking assets, and through i her eyes were still large and bright the skin around them had creased and bagged.

At last she released Michael, and turned to Isabella.

'My darling little girl, I would hardly have recognized you. What a lovely young woman you have become." They embraced. Isabella recalled how her mother had smelled, it was one of her pleasant childhood memories, but this woman smelled of some cheap and flowery perfume, of cigarette smoke and boiled cabbage, and - Isabella could barely credit her own senses - of underclothing that had been worn too long without changing.

She broke off the embrace, but Tara kept hold of her arm, and with Michael on the other side of her led them into the Lord Kitchener Hotel. The receptionist was a black lad, and Isabella recognized his voice as the one who had answered her phone call.

'Phineas is from Cape Town also,' Tara introduced them. 'He is one of our other runaways. He left after the troubles in sixty-one and, like the rest of us, he won't be going home yet. Now let me show you around the Lardy --' she laughed. 'That's what my permanent guests call it, the Lardy. I thought of changing the name, it's so colonial and Empire --' Tara chattered on happily, as she led them around the hotel. The carpets in the passages were threadbare, and the rooms had washbasins, but shared the toilet and bathroom at the end of each passage.

Tara introduced them to any of her guests they met in the corridors or public rooms. 'These are my son and daughter from Cape Town,' and they shook hands with German and French tourists who spoke no English, Pakistanis and Chinese, black Kenyans and coloured South Africans.

'Where are you staying?" Tara wanted to know.

'At the Dorchester." 'Of course." Tara rolled her eyes. 'Fifty guineas a day, paid for by the sweat of the workers in the Courtney mines. That is what your father would have chosen. Why don't you and Mickey move in here?

I have two nice rooms on the top floor free at the moment. You would meet so many interesing people, and we'd see so much more of each other." Isabella shuddered at the thought of sharing the toilet at the end of the passage and jumped in before Michael could agree.

'Daddy would be furious, he has prepaid for us - and now we know our way, it's only a short taxi ride." 'Taxis,' Tara sniffed. 'Why not take the bus or the underground like any ordinary person?" Isabella stared at her speechlessly. Didn't she understand that they weren't ordinary people? They were Courtheys. She was about to say so, when Michael sensed her intention and intervened smoothly.

'Of course you are quite right. You'll have to tell us what number bus to take and where to get off, Mater." 'Mickey darling, please don't call me Mater any longer. It's so terribly bourgeois. Call me either Mummy or Tara, but not that." 'All right. It will be a little bit strange at first, but okay. I'll call you Tara." 'It's almost lunch time,' Tara announced blithely. 'I asked cook to make a bread and butter pudding, I know it's one of your favourites, Mickey." 'I'm not awfully hungry, Mater -- Tara,' Isabella announced. 'And it must be jet-lag or something, but --' Michael pinched her sharply. 'That's lovely, Tara. We'd love to stay for lunch." 'I just have to look into the kitchen - make sure it's all under control - come along." As they entered the kitchen a child came running to Tara. He must have been helping the Irish cook, for his hands were white with flour to the elbows. Tara hugged him, happily heedless of the flour that rubbed off on her sweater.

A mat of short woolly curls covered his pate, and his skin was a clear light toffee colour. His eyes were huge and dark, and he had appealing gamine features. He reminded Isabella of any one of the dozens of children of the estate workers on Weltevreden. She smiled at him, and he gave back a cocky but friendly grin.

'This is Benjamin,' Tara said. 'And these, Benjamin, are your

! ',!!i brother and sister - Mickey and Isabella." Isabella stared at the child. She had tried to discount and for all that Lothar had told her, and in some measure she had succeede But now it all came rushing back, the words roaring in her ears ll flood waters.

'Your half brother is an attractive coffee colour,' Lothar had to her and she wanted to scream, 'How could you, Mater, how cou you do this to us?" But Michael had recovered from his obvious su prise, and now he held out his hand towards the child and said, 'Hi there, Ben. It's fine that we are brothers - but how about yc and me being friends also?" 'Hey, man - I like that,' Benjamin agreed instantly. To add Isabella's dismay and confusion, he spoke in a broad south Londc accent.

Isabella spoke barely a dozen words during lunch. The pea sou was thickened with flour that had not cooked through and it stuc to the roof of her mouth. The boiled silverside lay limply in its ov watery gravy, and the cabbage was cooked pink.

They sat at the table with Phineas, the receptionist, and five oth of Tara's guests, all black South African expatriates, and the boisteJ ous conversation was almost entirely conducted in left-wing jargo The government of which Isabella's beloved father was a minist was always referred to as the 'racist regime' and Michael joine cheerfully in the discussion about the redistribution of wealth an the return of the land to those who worked it after the revolutioz had succeeded and the People's Democratic Republic of Azania ha.

been established. Isabella wanted to scream at him, 'Damn you Mickey, they are talking about Weltevreden and the Silver Rive Mine. These are terrorists and revolutionaries - and their sole purpose is to destroy us and our world." When the bread-and-butter pudding was served, she could take i no longer.

'I'm sorry, Tara,' she whispered. 'I have a splitting headache, an I simply have to get back to the Dorchester and lie down." She wa so pale and discomforted that Tara made only a token protest and genuine noises of concern. Isabella refused to let Michael escort her 'I won't spoil your fun. You haven't seen Mater - Tara - in ages. I'l just grab a taxi." Perhaps it really was fatigue that had weakened her, but in the cal: she found herself weeping with chagrin and shame and fury.

'Damn her! Damn her to hell,' she whispered. 'She has disgraced and dishonoured all of us, Daddy and Nana and me and all the family." As soon as she reached her room she locked her door, threw herself on the bed and reached for the telephone.

'Exchange, I want to put a call through to Johannesburg in South Africa--' She read the number out of her address book.

The delay was less than half an hour and then a marvellously homey Afrikaans accent said, 'This is police headquarters, bureau for state security." 'I want to speak to Colonel Lothar De La Rey." 'De La Rey." Despite the thousands of miles that separated them, his voice was crisp and clear, and in her imagination she saw him again naked on the beach in the dawn, like a statue of a Greek athlete but with those glowing golden eyes, and she whispered, 'Oh God Lothie, I've missed you. I want to come home. I hate it here." He spoke quietly, reassuring and consoling her, and when she had calmed he ordered her, 'Tell me about it." 'You were right. Everything you said was true - even to her little brown bastard, and the people are all revolutionaries and terrorists.

What do you want me to do, Lothie? I'll do anything you tell me." 'I want you to stay there, and stick it out for the full two weeks.

You can telephone me every day, but you must stay on. Promise me, Bella." 'All right - but, God, I miss you and home." 'Listen, Bella. I want you to go to South Africa House the first opportunity you have. Don't let anybody know, not even your brother Michael. Ask for Colonel Van Vuuren, the military attach.

He will show you photographs and ask you to identify the people you meet." 'All right, Lothie - but I've told you twice already how much I miss you, while you, you swine, haven't said a word." 'I have thought about you every day since you left,' Lothar said.

'You're beautiful and funny and you make me laugh." 'Don't stop,' Isabella pleaded. 'Just keep talking like that." Adrian Van Vuuren was a burly avuncular man, who looked more like a friendly Free State farmer than a secret service man. He took her up to the ambassador's office and introduced her to His Excellency who knew Shasa well and they chatted for a few minutes.

His Excellency invited Isabella to the races at Ascot the coming Saturday but Colonel Van Vuuren intervened apologetically.

'Miss Courtney is doing a little job for us at present, Your Excellency. It might not be wise to make too much public display of her connections to the embassy." 'Very well,' the ambassador agreed reluctantly, 'But you will come to lunch with us, Miss Courtney - not often we have such a pretty girl at our gatherings." Van Vuuren gave her the short tour of the embassy and its a treasures, which ended in his office on the third floor. 'Now, my dear, we have some work for you." A pile of albums was stacked on his desk, each full of head-an shoulder photographs of men and women. They sat side by side or Van Vuuren flicked through the pages, picking out the mug shots the people she had met at the Lord Kitchener Hotel.

'You make it easier for us by knowing their names,' Van Vuurc remarked, and turned to a photograph of Phineas, the hotel recei tionist.

'Yes, that's him,' Isabella confirmed, and Van Vuuren looked u his details in a separate ledger. 'Phineas Mophoso. Born 194 Member of PAC. Convicted of public violence 16 May 1961. Violate bail conditions. Illegal emigration late 1961. Present location believe U.K." 'Small fry,' Van Vuuren grunted, 'but small fry often shoal wit big fish." He offered to provide an embassy car to drive Isabella bac to the Dorchester.

'Thank you, but I'll walk." She had been alone at Fortnum & Masons and when she got bac to the hotel Michael was frantic with worry.

'For heaven's sake, Mickey. I'm not a baby. I can look arte myself. I just felt like exploring on my own." 'Mater is giving a party for us at the Lord Kitchener this evenin She wants us there before six." 'You mean Tara, not Mater - and the Lardy, not the Lord Ki!

chener. Don't be so bourgeois and colonial, Mickey darling." At least fifty people crowded into the residents' lounge of the Lord for Tara's party, and she provided unlimited quantities of draugh bitter and Spanish red wine to wash down the Irish cook's unforgett able snacks. Michael entered into the spirit of the occasion. He wa at all times the centre of an arguing gesticulating group. Isabell backed herself into a corner ai the lounge and with a remote and ic' hauteur discouraged any familiar approach from the other guests while at the same time memorizing their names and faces as Tan introduced them.

After the first hour the smoky claustrophobic atmosphere, and th volume of conversation lubricated by Tara's Spanish plonk, became oppressive and Isabella's eyes felt gritty and a dull ache started ir her temples. Tara had disappeared and Michael was still enjoyin himselfi 'That's my patriotic duty for tonight,' she decided, and sidled to.

wards the door taking care not to alert Michael to her departure.

As she passed the deserted reception desk, she heard voices from behind the osted glass door of Tara's tiny office, and she had an attack of conscience.

'I can't just go off without thanking Mater,' she decided. 'It was an awful party, but she went to a lot of trouble and I am one of the guests of honour." She slipped behind the desk, and was about to tap on the panel of the door when she heard her mother say, 'But, comrade, I didn't expect you to arrive tonight." The words were commonplace, but the tone in which Tara said them was not. She was more than agitated she was afraid, deadly afraid.

A man's voice replied, but it was so low and hoarse that Isabella could not catch the words, and then Tara said, 'But they are my own children. It's perfectly safe." This time the man's reply was sharper.

'Nothing is ever safe,' he said. 'They are also your husband's children, and your husband is a member of the fascist racist regime. We will leave now and return later after they have gone." Isabella acted instinctively. She darted back into the lobby and out through the glass front doors of the hotel. The narrow street was lined with parked vehicles, one of them a dark delivery van tall enough to screen her. She hid behind it.

After a few minutes, two men followed her out of the front entrance of the hotel. They both wore dark raincoats but their heads were bare. They set off briskly, walking side by side towards the Cromwell Road and as they came level with where she leaned against the side of the van, the street light lit their faces.

The man nearest to her was black, with a strong, resolute face, broad nose and thick African lips. His companion was white and much older. His flesh was pale as putty and had the same soft amorphous look. His hair was black and lank and lifeless. It hung on to his forehead, and his eyes were dark and fathomless as pools of coal tar - and Isabella understood why her mother had been afraid. This was a man who inspired fear.

Colonel Van Vuuren sat beside her at his desk with the pile of albums in front of them. 'He is a white man. That makes life a lot easier for all of us,' he said as he selected one of the albums.

'These are all white,' he explained. 'We have got them all in here.

Even the ones safely behind bars, like Brain Fischer." She found his photograph on the third page.

'That's the one." 'Are you sure?" Van Vuuren asked. 'It's not a very good photo." It must have been taken as he was climbing into a vehicle, for the background was a city street. He was glancing back, most of his body obscured by the open door of the vehicle, and movement ha blurred his features slightly.

'Yes. That's him all right,' Isabella repeated. 'I could never mistaN those eyes." Van Vuuren referred to the separate ledger. 'The photograph w taken in East Berlin by the American CIA two years ago. He is wily bird, that's the only picture we have. His name is Joe Cicer( He is the secretary general of the South African Communist Par!

and a colonel in the Russian KGB. He is a chief of staff of tl: military wing of the banned ANC, the Umkhonto we Sizwe." Va Vuuren smiled. 'And so, my dear, the big fish has arrived. Now w must try and identify his companion. That will not be so easy." It took almost two hours. Isabella paged through the alburr slowly. When she finished one pile, Van Vuuren's assistent broug in another armful of albums and she began again. Van Vuuren st patiently beside her, sending out for coffee and encouraging her with a smile and a word when she flagged.

'Yes." Isabella straightened up at last. 'This is the one." 'You have been wonderful. Thank you." Van Vuuren reached fc the ledger and turned to the curriculum vitae of the man in th photograph.

'Raleigh Tabaka,' he read out. 'Secretary of the Vaal branch PAC and member of Poqo. Organizer of the attack on the Sharpeviii police station. Disappeared three years ago, before he could b detained. Since then there have been rumours that he was seen i: training camps in Morocco and East Germany. He is rated as trained and dangerous terrorist. Two big fish together. Now, if w could just find what they are up to!" Tara Courtney waited up long after her party had broken up. Th last guests had staggered through the glass doors, and Michael ha( kissed her goodnight and gone off to try and pick up a late cruisinl taxi in the Cromwell Road.

Since first she had met him, Joe Cicero had been associated will danger and suffering and loss. There was always an aura of myster'.

and a passionless evil surrounding him. He terrified her. The ma] with him she had met for the first time that night. Joe Cicero ha( introduced him only as Raleigh, but Tara's heart had gone out t( him immediately. Although he was much younger, he reminded he so strongly of her own Moses. He had the same smouldering intensit,.

and compelling presence, the same dark majesty of bearing an( command.

i They came back a little after two in the morning, and Tara let them in and led them through to her own bedroom in the back area of the hotel.

'Raleigh will stay with you for the next two or three weeks. Then he will return to South Africa. You will provide everything he asks for, particularly the information." 'Yes, omrade, Tara whispered. Although she was the registered C owner and licensed proprietress of the hotel, the money for the purchase had been provided by Joe Cicero and she took her orders directly from him.

'Raleigh is the nephew of Moses Gama,' Joe said, watching her carefully with those expressionless black eyes as she turned to the younger man.

'Oh Raleigh, I didn't realize. It is almost as though we are one family. Moses is the father of my son, Benjamin." 'Yes,' Raleigh answered. 'I know that. This is the reason that I am able to give you the object of my mission to South Africa. Your dedication is proven and unquestioned. I am going back to Africa to free your husband and my uncle, Moses Gama, from the prison of the fascist racist Verwoerd regime to lead the democratic revolution of our people." Her joy dawned slowly with her understanding. Then she went to Raleigh Tabaka and as she embraced him she was weeping with happiness.

'I will give anything to help you succeed,' she whispered through her tears. 'Even my life." Jakobus Stander had only two classes on a Friday morning, and the last one ended at 11.30. He left the grounds of the University of the Witwatersrand immediately afterwards and caught the bus down to Hillbrow. It was a ride of only fifteen minutes and he reached his flat a little after midday.

The suitcase was still on the low coffee table where he had placed it the night before, after he had finished working on it. It was a cheap brown case made of imitation leather with a pressed metal lock.

He stood staring at it with pale topaz-coloured eyes. Except for the eyes, he was an unremarkable young man. Although he was tall, he was too thin and the grey flannel trousers hung loosely around his waist. His hair was long, flecked with dandruff, hanging over the back of his collar, and the elbows of his baggy brown corduroy jacket were patched with leather. Rather than a tie he wore a turtle-neck jersey with the collar rolled over. It was the self-consciously shabl uniform of the left-wing intellectual, adopted by even the Profess, of the Department of Sociology in which Jakobus was a senior le turer.

Without removing the jacket, he sat down on the narrow bed ai stared at the suitcase.

'I am one of the only ones left,' he thought. 'It's all up to me no They have taken Baruch and Randy and Berny - I am all alone." There had been less than fifty of them even in the best times.

small band of true patriots, champions of the proletariat, almost of them white and young, members of the young liberals or studen and faculty members involved in radical student politics at the Enl lish-speaking universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersran, Kobus had been the only Afrikaner in their ranks.

At first they had called themselves the National Committee ( Liberation, and their methods had been more sophisticated th Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Rivonia group. They had used dynami and electrical timing devices, and their successes had been many an heartening. They had destroyed power substations and railw switching systems, even a reservoir dam, and in the triumphal mood of those early days they had restyled themselves the Africa Resistance Movement.

In the end they had been destroyed in exactly the same manner Mandela and his Rivonia group, by the inefficiency of their aw security and the inability of the members who were captured by t security police to withstand interrogation.

He was one of the only ones left, but he knew that his hours ( freedom were numbered. The security police had taken Berny tw days ago and by now he would have talked. Berny was not made ( heroic stuff, a small pale and nervous creature, too soft-hearted fc the cause. Jakobus had argued against his recruitment, but that wa too late now. The bureau for state security had Berny, and Bern knew his name. There was very little time left, but still he procrastir ated. He looked at his wristwatch. It was almost one o'clock. Hi mother would be home by now, preparing his father's lunch. H lifted the telephone.

Sarah Stander stood over the kitchen stove. She felt tired an( dispirited, but she seemed always to be tired these days. The telephone rang and she turned down the hot plate of the stove, and wipe( her hands on her apron as she went through to her husband's stud> The room was lined with shelves of dusty law books that had one been a promise of hope to her, a symbol of success and advancemenl but now seemed rather to be the fetters that bound Roelf and her iJ penury and mediocrity.

She lifted the phone. 'Hello. This is Mevrou Stander." 'Mama,' Jakobus replied, and she gave a little coo of joy.

'My boy - where are you?" But at his reply her spirits plunged again.

'In the flat in Johannesburg, Mama." That was a thousand miles away, and her longing to see him devastated her. 'I hoped you were--' 'Mama,' he cut her off. 'I had to speak to you. I had to explain.

Something terrible is going to happen. I wanted to tell you - I don't want you to be angry with me, I don't want you to hate me." 'Never!" she cried. 'I love you too much, my boy --' 'I don't want Papa and you to feel bad. What I do is not your fault. Please understand and forgive me." 'Kobus, my son, what is it? I don't understand what you are saying." 'I can't tell you, Mama. Soon you will understand. I love you and Papa - please remember that." 'Kobus,' she cried. 'Kobus!" but the earpiece clicked and then there was only the hum of a broken connection.

Frantically she rang the exchange and asked to be reconnected but it took fifteen minutes before the operator called her back. 'There is no reply from your Johannesburg number." Sarah was distraught. She roamed around her kitchen, the midday meal forgotten, twisting her apron in her fingers, trying desperately to think of some way of reaching her son. When her husband came in through the front door she rushed down the passageway and threw her arms around his neck, and she gabbled out her fears.

'Manie!" RoeIf said. 'I will telephone him. He can send one of his men around to Kobus's flat." 'Why didn't I think of that?" Sarah sobbed.

The secretary in Manfred's ministry told them he was not available and would not be in again until Monday morning.

'What will we do now?" Roelf was as worried as she was.

'Lothie." Sarah brightened. 'He is in the police in Johannesburg.

Ring Lothie, he will know what to do." Jakobus Stander broke the connection to his mother, and jumped to his feet. He knew he must act quickly and decisively now. Already he had wasted too much time, they would be coming for him soon.

He picked up the suitcase and left the flat, locking the door behind him. He rode down in the lift, still holding the heavy suitcase, even though the handle cut into his fingers. There were two girls in the lift with him. They ignored him and chattered to each other all the w down. He watched them surreptitiously. 'It may be you, he through 'It could be anybody." The girls barged out of the lift ahead of him, and he follow slowly, walking lopsidedly because of the weight of the brown su case.

He caught the bus at the corner and took the seat nearest t door, placing the suitcase on the seat beside him, but retaining 1

grip on the handle all the way.

The bus stopped outside the side entrance of the Johannesbu railway station, and Jakobus was the first passenger to alight. Lu ging the suitcase, he started towards the station entrance, and th, his steps began to drag and his mouth went dry with terror. The was a constable of the railway police at the entrance, and as Jakob hesitated he looked directly at him. Jakobus wanted to drop t] suitcase and run back to the bus which was pulling away behiI him, but the.press of other passengers bore him forward like a de leaf in a stream.

He did not want to catch the constable's eye. He trudged forwa head bowed, concentrating on the heels of the fat woman in whi shoes just ahead of him. He looked up as he came level with tl station portals, and the constable was walking away from him, hid hands clasped lightly behind his back. Jakobus's legs felt rubbel and his relief was so intense that he thought he was going to be il He fought down his nausea and kept on going with the stream commuters.

At the centre of the concourse under the high arched skylight glass there was a goldfish pond surrounded by wooden benches. A though most of the benches were crowded with travellers snatching few minutes' rest between trains or awaiting the arrival of friend..

there was room for Jakobus at the end of one of them.

He sat down and placed the suitcase between his feet. He wa sweating heavily and he had difficulty in breathing. Waves of nause kept welling up from the pit of his guts and there was a bitter sic taste at the back of his throat.

He wiped his face with his handkerchief and kept swallowing bar.

until gradually he had control of himself again. Then he lookel around him. The other benches were still crowded. In the centre o the one facing him there was a mother with two daughters. Th youngest one was still in napkins, she sat on her mother's lap with dummy in her mouth. The elder girl had skinny sun-browned leg: and arms and frilly petticoats under her short skirt. She leaner against her mother's side and sucked a lollipop on a stick. Her moutt was dyed bright red by the sticky candy.

All around Jakobus passed a continual stream of humanity, coming and going down the broad staircase that led up to the street.

Like columns of ants, they spread out to reach the separate platforms, and the loudspeakers boomed out information on arriving and departing trains, and the hiss and huff of escaping steam from the locomotives echoed against the high arches of glass above where Jakobus sat.

He looked down at the suitcase between his feet. He had drilled a needle hole through the imitation leather. A strand of piano wire emerged from the aperture, and he had fixed a brass curtain ring to the end of it, and taped the ring to the brown leather beside the handle.

Now he picked at the tape with hi fingernail and peeled it away.

He stuck his forefinger through the brass ring and gently pulled the wire taut. There was a muted click from the interior of the suitcase and he started guiltily and looked around him again. The little girl with the lollipop stuck in her cheek had been watching him.

She gave him a sticky smile and shyly cuddled closer to her mother's side.

Using his heels and the back of his legs, Jakobus pushed the suitcase slowly under the bench on which he was seated. Then he stood up and walked briskly across to the men's toilets on the far side of the concourse. He stood in front of one of the porcelain urinals and checked his wristwatch. It was ten minutes after two. He zipped up his fly and walked out of the men's room.

The mother and the two little girls were still sitting where he had left them, and the brown suitcase lay under the bench opposite. As he passed the child recognized him and smiled again. He did not return the smile but went up the staircase into the street. He walked down to the Langham Hotel at the corner and went into the men's bar. He ordered a cold Castle beer and drank it slowly, standing at the bar, checking his wristwatch every few minutes. He wondered if the mother and the two little girls had left, or if they were still sitting on the bench.

The ferocity of the explosion shocked him. He was almost a block away but it knocked over his glass and the dregs of the beer ran across the bar top. There was consternation throughout the bar room. Men were swearing with surprise and astonishment and rushing to the door.

Jakobus followed them out into the street. The traffic had stopped, and people were swarming out of the buildings to block the pavements. From the station entrance a cloud of dust and smoke billowed and through it staggered vague shadowy figures, powdered with dust, their clothing hanging off them in rags. Somewhere a woman began to scream, and all around him there were shouted questions.

'What is it? What happened?" Jakobus turned and walked away. He heard the sirens of the police cars and the fire engines coming closer, but he did not look back.

'No, Tanhie Sarie, I haven't seen Kobus since we last met at Waterkloof." Lothar De La Rey tried to be patient. The Standers were old friends of his parents, and he had spent many happy childhood holidays at the cottage on the Stander farm at the seaside.

That was before Oom RoeIf Stander had been forced to sell the farm.

'Yes, yes Tannie. I know, but Kobus and I live in different worlds now - I know how worried you must be. Yes, of course." Lothar was taking the call in his private office in the headquarters complex of Marshall Square, and he glanced at his wristwatch as he listened to Sarah Stander's plaintive voice. It was just before two o'clock.

'What time was it when he telephoned you?" Lothar asked, and listened to her reply. 'That was an hour ago. Where did he say he was speaking from? All right, Tannie, what is his address in Hillbrow?" He scribbled it on the pad in front of him. 'Now tell me, Tannie, what was it exactly he said. Something terrible and you must forgive him? Yes, that doesn't sound very good, I agree. Suicide?

No, Tannie Sarie, I'm sure he didn't mean that, but I will send one of my men to check his flat, why don't you ring the university in the meantime?" One of the other telephones on his desk squealed and he ignored it. 'What did they say at the university?" he asked. 'All right, Tannie, I will telephone you and Oom Roeif just as soon as I have any news." By now all three of his telephones were shrilling, and Captain Lourens, his assistant, was signalling him frantically from the door of his office.

'Yes, I understand, Tannie Sarie. Yes, I promise I will telephone you. But I must ring off now." Lothar replaced the receiver and looked up at Lourens.

'da, what is it, man?" 'An explosion at the main railway station. It looks like another bomb." Lothar jumped to his feet and snatched up his jacket. 'Casualties?" he demanded.

'There are bodies and blood all over the place." 'The bloody swines,' Lothar said bitterly.

The street was cordoned off. They left the police car at the barrier and Lothar, who was in plain clothes, showed his identification and the sergeant saluted him. There were five ambulances parked outside the station entrance with their lights flashing.

At the head of the staircase leading down into the main concourse Lothar paused. The damage was terrible. The glass in the arched skylights had been blown out and it coated the marble floors, glittering like a field of ice crystals.

The restaurant had been turned into a first-aid station and the white-jacketed doctors and ambulance crews were at work. The stretcher-bearers were carrying their grisly loads up the staircase to the waiting vehicles.

The officer in charge of the investigation was a major from Marshall Square. He had his men searching the wreckage already, working methodically in an. extended line across the concourse. He recognized Lothar and beckoned to him. The glass crunched under Lothar's feet as he crossed to join him.

'How many dead?" he asked without any preamble.

'We have been incredibly lucky, Colonel. About forty injured, mostly by flying glass, but only one dead." He reached down and pulled back the plastic sheet that was spread at his feet.

Under it lay a little girl in a short dress with a frilly lace petticoat.

Both her legs and one arm had been blown away, and the dress was soaked with her blood.

'Her mother lost both eyes, and her little sister will lose one arm,' the major said, and Lothar saw that the child's face was miraculously unscathed. She seemed to be sleeping. Her mouth was bright red with sticky sugar and in her remaining hand she still clutched the stick of a half-eaten lollipop.

'Lourens,' Lothar said quietly to his assistant. 'Ring Records. Use the telephone in the restaurant. Tell them I want a computer run on my desk when I get back to the square. I want the name of every known white radical on the list. It had to be a white man in this section of the station." He watched Lourens cross the concourse and then he looked down at the tiny body under the plastic sheet.

'I'm going to get the bastard who did this,' he whispered. 'This one isn't going to get away." His staff were waiting for him when he got back to the office forty minutes later. They had already vetted the computerized list and checked the names of those in detention, in exile or those whose whereabouts could be assumed to be outside the Witwatersrand area.

There remained 396 suspects unaccounted for. They were listed in alphabetical order and it was almost four o'clock before they had worked down to the 'S' section. As Lothar folded over the last sheet of the print-out the name seemed to leap from the page at him: STANDER, JAKOBUS PETRUS In the same moment Sarah Stander's plaintive voice echoed in his ears.

'Stander,' he said crisply. 'This one is a new addition." He had last checked the list twenty-four hours before. It was one of the most important tools of his trade, the names upon it so familiar that he could conjure up each face clearly in his mind's eye. Kobus' name had not been there on his last reading.

Captain Lourens picked up the internal telephone to Records, and spoke to the files clerk on the section, then he turned back to Lothar as he hung up the receiver.

'Stander's name comes from the interrogation of a member of the African Resistance Movement. Bernard Fisher. He was arrested on the fifth, two days ago. Stander is a lecturer at Wits University." 'I know who he is." Lothar strode out of the operations room into his private office and ripped the top sheet off his notepad. 'And I know where he is." He drew the .38 police special from his shoulder holster and checked the load as he gave his orders. 'I want four units of the flying squad and a break-in team with flak jackets and shotguns - and I want photographs of the bomb victims, the girl --' The flat was on the fifth floor at the end of a long open gallery.

Lothar placed men on every stairwell and both fire escapes, at the lift station and in the main lobby. He and Lourens went up with the break-in team, and they all moved stealthily into position.

With the police special cocked in his right hand, his back against the wall, clear of the door, he reached out and rang the bell.

There was no reply. He rang again, and they waited tensely. The silence drew out. Lothar reached out to ring a third time, when there were light hesitant footsteps beyond the glass panel door.

'Who is it?" a breathless voice called.

'Kobus - it's me, Lothie." 'Liewe Here! Sweet God!" and the sound of running footsteps receded into the flat.

'Go!" said Lothar and the hammer man from the break-in team stepped up to the door with the ten-pound sledgehammer. The lock burst open at the first stroke and the door crashed back against its hinges.

Lothar was the first one in. The lounge was deserted and he ran straight through into the bedroom.

Behind him Lourens shouted, 'Pasop! Look out! He might be armed,' But Lothar wanted to stop him reaching a window and jumping.

The bathroom door was locked and he heard running water beyond it.

He took the door with his shoulder, and the panel splintered. His own momentum carried him on into the bathroom.

Jakobus was leaning over the wash basin, shaking tablets from a bottle into the palm of his hand and cramming them into his mouth.

His cheeks bulged, and he was gagging and swallowing.

Lothar brought the barrel of the revolver down on the wrist that held the bottle, and the bottle shattered into the basin. He caught Jakobus by his long hair and forced him to his knees. He wedged open his jaws with thumb and forefinger and with the fingers of his other hand hooked the crushed damp porridge of tablets out of his mouth.

'I want an ambulance team with a stomach pump up here,' he yelled at Lourens. 'And get an analysis of that bottle - its label and contents." Jakobus was struggling and Lothar hit him open-handed, back and across the face. Jakobus whimpered and subsided, and Lothar thrust his forefinger deeply down his throat.

Gasping and chokirg and retching, Jakobus started struggling again, but Lothar held him easily. He worked his forefinger around in his throat, keeping on even when hot vomit spurted up over his hand. Satisfied at last he let Jakobus lie in a puddle of his own vomit while he rinsed his hands in the basin.

He dried his hands and seized Jakobus by the back of his shirt. He hauled him to his feet, dragged him through into the lounge and flung him into one of the armchairs.

Lourens and the forensic team were already working over the apartment.

'Did you get the photographs?" Lothar asked, and Lourens handed him a buff envelope.

Jakobus sat huddled in the chaii'. His shirt was fouled with vomit, and his nose and eyes were red and running. The corner of his mouth was torn where Lothar had forced it open, and he was trembling violently.

Lothar sorted through the contents of the envelope and then he laid a glossy black and white print on the coffee table in front of Jakobus.

Jakobus stared at it. It was a photograph of the truncated body of the child, nestled in a pool of her own blood with the lollipop in her hand. He began to weep. He sobbed and choked and turned his head away. Lothar moved around behind his chair and caught the back of his neck, forced his head back. 'Look at it!" he ordered.

'I didn't mean it,' Jakobus whispered brokenly. 'I didn't mean it to happen." The cold white fury faded from Lothar's brain, and he releas Jakobus's head and stepped back from him uncertainly. Those we the words he had used. 'I didn't mean it to happen." The exact war he had used as he had stood over the black boy with the dead gir head cradled in his lap and the raw wounds running red into tl dust of Sharpeville.

Suddenly Lothar felt weary and sickened. He wanted to go aw by himself. Lourens could take over from here, but he braced himself to fight off the despair.

He laid his hand on Jakobus's shoulder, and the touch wE strangely gentle and compassionate.

'Ja, Kobus, we never mean it to happen - but still they die. Now is your turn, Kobus, your turn to die. Come, let's go." The arrest was made six hours after the bomb blast, and even th, English press was fulsome in its praise of the efficiency of the polic investigation. Every front page across the nation carried photograph, of Colonel Lothar De La Rey.

Six weeks later in the Johannesburg Supreme Court, Jakobus Stander pleaded guilty to the charge of murder and was sentenced to death. Two weeks later his appeal was denied by the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein and sentence of death was confirmed. Lothar De La Rey's promotion to brigadier was announced within days of the Appellate Division's decision.

Raleigh Tabaka arrived in Cape Town while the Stander trial was still in progress. He came back the way he had left, as a crewman on a Liberian-registered tramp steamer.

His papers, although issued in the name of Goodwill Mhlazini, were genuine and he passed quickly through customs and immigration-and with his bag over his shoulder walked up the foreshore to the main Cape Town railway station.

When he reached the Witwatersrand the following evening, he caught the bus out to Drake's Farm and went to the cottage where Victoria Gama was staying. Vicky opened the door and she had the child by the hand. There was the smell of cooking from the little kitchenette in the back.

She started violently as she saw him. alelgh, come in quickly." 'R ' She drew him into the cottage and bolted the door.

'You shouldn't have come here. You know that I am banned.

They watch this place,' she told him as she went quickly to the windows and drew the curtains. Then she came back to where he stood in the centre of the room and studied him.

'You have changed,' she said softly. 'You are a man now." The training and the discipline of the camps had left their mark. He stood straight and alert, and he seemed to exude an intensity and a force that reminded her of Moses Gama.

'He has become one of the lions,' she thought, and she asked, 'Why have you come here, Raleigh, and how can I help you?" 'I have come to free Moses Gama from the prison of the Boers and I will tell you how you can help me." Victoria gave a little cry of joy, and clutched the child closer to her. 'Tell me what to do,' she pleaded.

He would not stay to eat the evening meal with Victoria, would not even sit down on one of the cheap deal chairs.

'When is your next visit to Moses?" he asked in a low but powerful voice.

'In eight days' time,' Victoria told him, and he nodded.

'Yes I knew it was soon. That was part of our planning. Now, here is what you must do --' When the prison launch ran out from Cape Town harbour, carrying Victoria and the child to exercise their six-monthly visiting rights, Raleigh Tabaka was on the deck of one of the crayfish trawlers that was moored alongside the repair wharf in the outer harbour. Raleigh was dressed like one of the trawlermen in a blue jersey, yellow plastic overalls and sea boots. He pretended to be working on the pile of crayfish pots on the foredeck, but he studied the ferry as it passed close alongside before it made the turn out through the entrance to the breakwater. He made out Victoria's regal figure in the stern. She was wearing her caftan in yellow, green and black, the colours of the ANC which always infuriated the jailers.

When the ferry had cleared the harbour and was set on course towards the low whale-backed profile of Robben Island far out in the bay, Raleigh walked back along the deck of the eighty-foot trawler to the wheelhouse.

The skipper of the trawler was a burly coloured man, dressed like Raleigh in jersey and waterproofs. Raleigh had met his son at the Lord Kitchener Hotel in London, an activist who had taken part in the Longa uprising and had fled the country immediately afterwards.

'Thank you, comrade,' Raleigh said, and the skipper came to the door of the wheelhouse and took the black pipe from between his even white teeth.

'Did you find out what you wanted?" 'Yes, comrade." 'When will you need me for the next part?" 'Within ten days." Raleigh replied.

'You must give me at least twenty-four hours' warning. I have t get a permit from the fisheries department to work in the bay." Raleigh nodded. 'I have planned for that." He turned his head t( look forward towards the trawler's bows. 'Is your boat stron enough?" he asked.

'You let me worry about that,' the skipper chuckled. 'A boat that can live in the South Atlantic winter gales is strong enough for any.

thing." He handed Raleigh the small canvas airline bag that containec his street clothes. 'We will meet again soon then, my friend?" 'You can be sure of that, comrade,' Raleigh said quietly and wenl up the gangplank on to the wharf.

Raleigh changed out of his trawlerman's gear in the public toilet near the harbour gates, and then went across to the carpark behind the customs house. Ramsami's old Toyota was parked up against the fence, and Raleigh climbed into the back seat.

Sammy Ramsami looked up from the copy of The Cape Times he was reading. He was a good-looking young Hindu lawyer who specialized in political cases. For the previous four years he had represented Vicky Gama in her never-ending legal battle with authority, and he had accompanied her from the Transvaal on this visit to her husband.

'Did you get what you wanted?" he asked, and Raleigh grunted noncommittally.

'I don't want to know what this is all about,' Sammy Ramsami said, and Raleigh smiled coldly.

'Don't worry, comrade, you will not be burdened with that knowledge." They did not speak again, not for the next four hours while they waited for Vicky to return from the island. She came at last, tall and stately in her brilliant caftn and turban, the child beside her, and the coloured stevedores working on the dock recognized her and cheered her as she passed.

She came to the Toyota and climbed into the front seat with the child on her lap.

'He is on another hunger strike,' she said. 'He has lost so much weight he looks like a skeleton." 'That will make our work a lot easier,' said Sammy Ramsami and started the Toyota.

At nine o'clock the next morning Ramsami presented an urgent application to the Supreme Court for an order that a private physician be allowed access to the prisoner Moses Gama, and as grounds to support his application he presented the sworn affidavits of Victoria Dinizulu Gama and the local representative of the International Red Cross as to the deterioration in the prisoner's physical and mental condition.

The judge in chambers issued an order calling on the minister of justice to show cause within twenty-four hours why the access order should not be granted. The state attorney general opposed the application strenuously, but after listening to Mr Samuel Ramsami's submission, the judge granted the order.

The physician named in the order was Dr Chetty Abrahamji, the same man who had delivered Tara Courtney's son. He was a consulting physician at Groote Schuur Hospital. In company with the government district physician, Dr Abrahamji made the ferry trip out to Robben Island-where for three hours he examined the prisoner in the prison clinic.

At the end of the examination he told the State doctor, 'I don't like this at all. The patient is very much under weight, complaining of indigestion and chronic constipation. I don't have to spell out what those presentations suggest." 'Those symptoms have been caused by the fact that the prisoner has been on a hunger strike. In fact I have been considering attempting to force-feed." 'No, Doctor,' Abrahamji interrupted him. 'I see the symptoms as much more significant. I am ordering a Cat Scan." 'There are no facilities available for a Cat Scan on the island." 'Then he will have to be moved to Groote Schuur for the examination." Once again the state attorney general opposed the order for the prisoner to be moved from Robben Island to Groote Schuur Hospital, but the jdge was influenced by Dr Abrahamji's written report and impressed by his verbal evidence and once again granted the order.

Moses Gama was brought to the mainland amid the strictest conditions of secrecy and security. No previous warning of the move was given to any person outside those directly involved, to prevent the organization of any form of demonstration by liberal political bodies, and to frustrate the intense desire of the press to obtain a photograph of this patriarch of black aspirations.

It was necessary, however, to give Dr Abrahamji twenty-four hours' advance notice to enable him to reserve the use of the test equipment at the hospital, and the police moved into the area of the hospital the evening before the transfer. They cleared the corridors and rooms through which the prisoner would move of all but essential hospital staff, and searched them for explosives or any indication of illegal preparations.

From the public telephone booth in the main hospital administration block Dr Abrahamji rang Raleigh Tabaka at Molly Broadhurst's house in Pinelands.

'I am expecting company at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon,' he said simply.

'Your guest must not leave you until after nightfall,' Raleigh replied.

'That can be arranged,' Abrahamji agreed, and hung up.

The prison ferry came in through the harbour entrance at one o'clock in the afternoon. The deadlights of the cabin portholes were closed, and there were armed prison warders on deck, fore and aft, and their vigilance was apparent, even from where Raleigh was working on the foredeck of the trawler.

The ferry sailed across the harbour to 'A' berth, its usual mooring.

There was an armoured prison van waiting on the dock, with four motor-cycle police in uniform and a grey police Land-Rover.

Through the riot screens on the cab of the Land-Rover Raleigh could make out the shape of helmets and the short thick barrels of automatic shotguns held at port arms.

As the ferry touched the wharf, the prison van reversed up and the rear doors swung open. The armed warders seated on the padded benches in the body of the truck jumped down to meet the prisoner.

Raleigh had just a glimpse of a tall gaunt figure in plain prison khaki uniform as he was hustled up the gangplank and into the waiting van, but even across the width of the harbour basin he could see that Moses Gama's hair was now pure silvery white, and that he was manacled at the wrists and that heavy leg-irons hampered his gait.

The doors of the van slammed shut. The motor-cycle escort closed in formation around it and the Land-Rover followed closely behind it as it sped away towards the main dock gates.

Raleigh left the trawler and Molly Broadhurst was waiting for him beyond the main gates. They drove up the lower slopes of Table Mountain to where the hospitar stood, a massive complex of white walls and red clay tiles below the stone pines and open meadows of Rhodes Estate and the tall grey rock buttresses of the mountain itself. Raleigh made a careful note of the time required for the journey from the docks to the hospital.

They drove slowly up the busy road to the main entrance of the hospital. The police Land-Rover, motor-cycles and armoured van were lined up in the public carpark beyond the entrance to the outpatients section. The warders had doffed their riot helmets and were standing around the vehicles in relaxed attitudes.

'How will Abrahamji keep him there until dark?" Molly wanted to know.

'I did not ask,' Raleigh replied. 'I expect he will keep on demanding further tests, or will deliberately sabotage the machinery - I don't know." Raleigh turned the car in a circle in front of the main entrance and they drove back down the hill.

'You are sure there is no other way to leave the hospital grounds?" Raleigh asked.

'Quite sure,' Molly replied. 'The van must pass here. Drop me at the bus stop. It will be a long wait and at least I will have a bench to sit on." Raleigh pulled into the kerb. 'You have the number of the telephone on the dock, and coins?" She nodded.

'Where is your nearest telephone from here?" he insisted.

'I have checked it all carefully. There is a public phone booth at the corner." She pointed. 'It will take two minutes for me to reach it, and if it is out of order or occupied, there is another telephone in the car across the street. I have already made friends with the proprietor." R-tleigh left her at the bus stop and drove back to the centre of town. He left Molly's car in the side street they had agreed upon so that it would not be found at the docks or anywhere in the vicinity and he walked back down the Heerengracht showing his seaman's papers at the gate.

The skipper of the trawler was in the wheelhouse and he handed Raleigh a mug of heavily sweetened coffee which he sipped as they went over the final arrangements.

'Are my men ready?" Raleigh asked as he stood up, and the skipper shrugged. 'That is your business, not mine." They were in the bottom of the trawler's deep hold where the heat in the unventilated space was oppressive. Robert and Changi were stripped to vests and jogging shorts. They jumped up as Raleigh came down the ladder.

'So far it goes well,' Raleigh assured them. They were old companions from the PAC Poqo days, and Changi had been at Sharpeville on the terrible day that Amelia died. 'Are you ready?" Raleigh asked him.

'We can check,' Changi suggested. 'Once more will not hurt us." The inflatable Zodiac boat that stood on the floor of the hold was the 17-foot 6-inch model that could carry ten adults with ease. The fifty-horsepower Evinrude outboard motor could push it at thirty knots.

The cover of the engine had been painted matt black.

The rig had been stolen by Robert and Changi working together from the yard of a boat dealer two days before, and could not be traced back to any of them.

'The engine?" Raleigh demanded.

'Robert has checked and serviced it." 'I even changed the gear-box oil,' Robert agreed. 'She runs beauti fully." 'Tanks?" 'Both full,' Robert said. 'We have a range of a hundred miles o better." 'Wet suits?" 'Check,' Changi said. 'And thermal blankets for the leader." 'Tools?" Raleigh asked, and Changi opened the padded flotatioz bag and laid out the tools on the deck, checking each as Raleigt called them from his list.

'Good,' Raleigh agreed at last. 'You can rest now. Nothing mar to do." Raleigh climbed up out of the hold. It was still too early. H glanced at his wristwatch. Not yet four o'clock, but he left the trawleJ and went down the dock to the public telephone booth at the end.

He telephoned directory enquiries and asked for a fictitious number in Johannesburg, just to make certain the line was in order.

Then he sat on the edge of the wharf with his legs dangling and watched the seagulls squabbling over the offal and refuse that floated on the harbour waters.

It was fully dark by seven-forty but it was another twenty minutes before the telephone in the booth rang and Raleigh jumped up.

'They are on their way." Molly's voice was soft and muffled.

'Thank you, comrade,' Raleigh said. 'Go home now." He hurried back down the wharf and the trawler skipper had seen him coming. As Raleigh jumped down on to the dock the two deckhands threw off the lines. The big caterpillar motor blustered and the trawler surged away from the dock and headed out through the entrance.

Raleigh swarmed down into the hold where Robert and Changi were already in their wet suits." They had Raleigh's suit laid out for him and they helped him into it.

'Ready?" one of the deckhands called down from above.

'Send it down,' Raleigh shouted back, and they watched the arm of the derrick swing out over the hold, silhouetted against the stars, and the line came down from the boom.

The three of them worked swiftly, hooking the Zodiac on, but before they had finished, the beat of the trawler's engine died away and the motion of the hull in the water changed as the vessel's way died and she began to drift.

Raleigh led them up the ladder on to the deck. The night was moonless, but the stars were bright and clear. The light breeze was from the south-east, so there was unlikely to be a change in this fair weather. All the trawler's navigational lights and the lights in the wheelhouse were extinguished.

Cape Town was ablaze with lights. The mountain was floodlit, a great ghostly silver hulk under the stars, while behind them the lights on Robben Island twinkled low on the black sea. Raleigh judged that they were about half-way between the city and the island.

The skipper was waiting for him on deck.

'We must move fast now,' he said.

Robert and Changi climbed into the Zodiac. Their wet suits were black, the rubber sides of the boat were black and the engine cover of the Evinrude was black. They would be almost invisible on the black waters.

'Thank you, comrade,' Raleigh said and offered the skipper his hand.

'Amandla!" said the skipper as he gripped it. 'Power!" and Raleigh took his place in the bows of the Zodiac.

The winch clattered and the Zodiac rose swaying, swung out over the side, and then fell swiftly to the surface of the water.

'Start up,' Raleigh instructed, and Robert whipped the starter cord and the engine fired and caught with the first pull.

'Cast off,' Raleigh ordered, and Changi unhooked the line from the boom, while Robert manoeuvred the Zodiac alongside the trawler and tied on to the light line from the rail. He let the engine idle for five minutes to warm it thoroughly and then cut it.

The two vessels lay silently linked together and the minutes passed torturously.

Suddenly the skipper called down. 'I have them in sight." 'Are you certain?" Raleigh cupped his hands around his mouth to reply.

'I've seen that ferry every day of my life." The skipper was leaning over the rail. 'Start your motor and cast off." The Evinrude roared into life and the Zodiac dropped back astern of the trawler. Now Raleigh could make out the ferry. It was coming almost directly towards them, both the green and red navigational lights showed.

The trawler moved forward, a wash of white water churning out from under her stern. She was still completely blacked out, and her speed built up rapidly. The skipper had assured Raleigh that she was capable of fourteen knots. She turned in a wide arc across the black surface and headed straight for the approaching ferry at speed.

Robert ran the Zodiac out to one side, and dropped back slightly, shearing off two hundred feet from the larger vessel.

The ferry held its course. Clearly it hadn't spotted the darkened ship bearing down out of the night. Raleigh stood up in the bows of the Zodiac steadying himself with two turns of the painter around his wrist and he watched the two vessels come together. The ferry was half the length of the steel-hulled trawler and it lay much lower in the water.

At the very last moment somebody on board the ferry shouted and then the bows of the trawler crashed into her, taking her just forward of the beam. Raleigh had warned the skipper not to damage the cabin and risk harming the occupants.

The trawler checked and the bows rose high as she trod the smaller vessel down, and then the ferry rolled over in a flurry of foam and breaking water. The trawler drove over her, broke free of her swamped hull, and went dashing away into the darkness. Within a hundred yards she had disappeared.

'The chains will pull him under,' Raleigh shouted. 'Work quickly!" He fitted his face plate over his mouth and nose.

Robert sent the Zodiac roaring alongside the sinking ferry. She had turned turtle and her bottom was painted with orange antifouling. Her lights were still burning beneath the water and there were three or four swimming warders thrashing around, trying to get a grip on the sides.

Raleigh and Changi, each carrying a short jemmy bar, slid over the side and dived under the trawler's submerged transom.

Raleigh jammed the point of the jemmy into the lock of the cabin door and with a single heave tore it away. The door slid back and a burst of trapped air exploded in silver bubbles around his head.

The cabin was flooded, but the lights were still burning, lighting the interior like a goldfish bowl, and a confusion of bodies, clad in the serge uniform of the prison service, were struggling and kicking and swirling around the cabin. Amongst them Raleigh picked out the khaki cotton drill tunic of a prisoner. He seized a handful of it and pulled Moses Gama clear.

Changi took Moses Gama's other arm and they swam him between them out from under the heaving transom and up to the surface. It had taken less than sixty seconds since the trawler had rammed, and Robert gunned the Zodiac up to them the moment they surfaced. He reached down and caught hold of Moses Gama's arm, the two men in the water heaved from under him and he rolled over the side of the Zodiac on to the floor boards.

Raleigh and Changi seized the loops of rope on the Zodiac's side to pull themselves up and the moment they were on board Robert gunned the Evinrude and they shot away from the foundering vessel.

The splashing and cries of distress faded behind them as Robert turned the Zodiac back towards the shore. The long deserted stretch of Woodstock beach showed as a pale line of sand and surf in the starlight ahead.

Raleigh stripped off his face plate and leaned solicitously over the figure on the deck. He lifted him into a sitting position, and Moses Gama coughed painfully.

'I see you, my uncle,' Raleigh said softly.

'Raleigh?" Moses' voice was rough with the salt water he had swallowed. 'Is it you, Raleigh?" 'We will be ashore in ten minutes, my uncle." Raleigh tucked one of the thermal blankets around Moses' shoulders. 'All the plans for your escape have been carefully laid. Everything's ready for you, my uncle. Soon now you will be where nobody can touch you." Robert ran the rubber inflatable in through the surf at full throttle and they shot up the sand, clear of the water. As they came to a standstill, they lifted Moses Gama out of the Zodiac and ran with him up the beach, carrying him between them so his chained feet barely touched the sand.

There was a small closed van parked amongst the dunes and , Raleigh jerked the rear doors open and they lifted Moses into the back and laid him on the mattress that covered the floorboards.

Changi jumped in beside him and Raleigh slammed the rear doors closed. Robert would take the Zodiac out and sink it.

Raleigh stripped off the jacket of his wet suit. The key to the van was on a loop of nylon line around his neck. He opened the driver's door and slid behind the wheel. The van was facing back along the track. The track joined the road that skirted the industrial area of Paarden Eiland and Raleigh drove sedately along it, towards the black township of Longa.

The official Cape Town residence of the minister of police was one of those clustered around the prime minister's residence at Groote Schuur. The cumbersome physical division of the legislative and excutive arms of government between the cities of Cape Town and Pretoria made for costly duplications. During the annual session of parliament in Cape Town all the ministers and the entire diplomatic corps were forced to move down from Pretoria a thousand miles to the north, and official residences had to be maintained in both cities at enormous expense.

Manfred De La Rey's ministerial residence was an elegant Edwardian mansion set in acres of its own private lawns and gardens.

As RoeIf Stander parked his shabby little secondhand Morris in front of this imposing building, it seemed oddly out of place.

Sarah Stander had been desperately trying to arrange a private 'meeting with Manfred ever since her son had been convicted and sentenced to death. However, Manfred had been in Pretoria, or at his ranch in the Free State or opening a memorial to the women who had died in the British concentration camps during the Boer war, or addressing the National Party caucus, and therefore unable to see her.

Sarah had persisted, telephoning his office at parliament every day, telephoning Heidi at home and pleading with her, until at last Manfred had agreed to see her at seven o'clock in the morning before he left for parliament.

Sarah and Roelf had driven in the Morris from Stellenbosch, leaving before sun-up so as not to be late for the appointment. When the coloured butler showed them through to the dining-room, Manfred and Heidi were seated at the breakfast table.

Heidi sprang up and came to kiss Sarah's cheek.

'I am sorry we have not seen you for so long, Sarie." 'Yes,' Sarah agreed bitterly. 'I also am sorry - but as you explained to me, Manie has been too busy for us." Manfred stood up from the head of the table.

He was in his shirtsleeves and the linen table napkin was tucked into the top of his dark suit trousers.

'Roelf,' he smiled, and they shook hands like old friends.

'Thank you for agreeing to see us, Manie,' Roelf said humbly. 'I know how busy you are these days." The years had not been kind to Roelf Stander, he had greyed and shrunk and Manfred felt a secret satisfaction as he studied him.

'Sit down, Roelf." Manfred led him to a place at the breakfast table. 'Heidi has ordered breakfast for you - will you start with porridge?" He seated Roelf and then reluctantly turned back to Sarah. She was still standing beside Heidi." 'Hello Sarie,' he said. She had been such a pretty little thing. They had grown from childhood together. There were still the remains of that girlhood beauty in her eyes and the shape of her face. The memory of the love they had once shared rushed back to him, and he felt the sweet nostalgic yearning for his youth. He had a vivid image of her lying naked on a bed of pine needles in the forest high up on the slopes of the Hottentots Holland mountains on the day that they had become lovers.

He searched in his heart for a vestige of what he had felt for her then, but he found none. Any love that once had flowered between them had been smothered by the knowledge of her treachery. For more than two decades he had delayed his revenge, contenting himself with slowly undermining and reducing this woman to her present state, waiting for exactly the right moment to extract the final retribution. It had come - and he savoured the moment.

'Hello, Manie,' she whispered, and she thought, 'He has been so cruel. He has filled my life with pain that has been difficult to bear.

Now all I ask from him is my son's life - surely he will not deny me that also." 'So, why have you come to see me?" Manie asked, and Heidi led Sarah to a seat at the table. She took the silver tea-pot from the coloured servant and told him, 'Thank you, Gamat, you can leave us now. Please close the door." And she poured steaming coffee into Sarah's cup.

'Yes, Sarie,' she agreed. 'Tell us why you have come to see us." 'You know why I have come to you,' Sarah said. 'It is Kobus." A deathly stillness held them all over the slow passage of the seconds, and then Manfred sighed.

'Ja,' he said. 'Kobus. Why do you come to me about Kobus?" ,x want you to help him, Manie." 'Kobus has been tried and convicted of a sickening act of senseless brutality,' Manfred said slowly. 'The highest court in the land has decreed that he must die on the gallows. How can I help Kobus?" 'The same way you helped that black terrorist, Moses Gama." Sarah was pale and the coffee cup clattered as she tried to set it down on the saucer. 'You saved his life - now save the life of my son." 'The state president exercised leniency in Gama's case--' 'No, Manie,' Sarah interrupted. 'It was you that changed it. I know - you have the power to save Kobus." 'No." He shook his head. 'I haven't got that sort of power. Kobus is a murderer. The worst kind of killer - one without compassion or remorse. I cannot help him." 'You can. I know you can, Manie. Please, I beg of you, save my son." 'I cannot." Manfred's expression set. His mouth hardened into a straight unrelenting line. 'I will not." 'You must, Manie. You have no choice - you must save him." 'Why do you say that?" He was becoming angry. 'There is nothing I must do." 'You must save him, Manie, because he is your son also. He is the child of our love, Manie, you have no choice.

You must save him." Manfred sprang to his feet and placed his hand protectively on Heidi's shoulder. 'You come into my house and insult me and my wife." His voice shook with the force of his anger. 'You come here with wild stories and accusations." RoeIf Stander had sat quietly through it all, but now he lifted hi head and spoke softly. 'It is true, Manie. Every word she tells you i true. I knew she was carrying your child when I married her. Sh told me frankly. You had deserted her - you had married Heidi am I loved her." 'You know it is true,' Sarah whispered. 'You have always known Manie. You cannot have looked into Kobus's eyes without knowing Both your sons have your yellow eyes, Manie, Lothar and Kobus both of them. You know he is your son." Manfred sank back on to his chair. In the silence Heidi reache( across and deliberately took his hand. That reassuring touch seemet to rally him.

'Even if that were true, there is nothing I would do. No matte] whose son he is, justice must run its course. A life for a life. He mus pay the penalty for his deed." 'Manie, please. You must help us--' Sarah was weeping now, ant the tears at last spilled down her pale cheeks. She tried to thro herself at Manfred's feet, but Roelf caught her and held her. She struggled weakly in his arms, but he held her and looked all Manfred.

'In the name of our friendship, Manie, everything we have done and shared - won't you help us?" he pleaded.

'I am sorry for you, Roelf." Manfred stood up again. 'You must take your wife home now." Roelf drew Sarah gently towards the door, but before they reached it Sarah pulled out of his hands and faced Manfred again.

'Why?" she cried in anguish. 'I know you can - why will you not help us?" 'Because of you White Sword failed,' he said softly. 'That is why I will not help you." She was struck dumb by the words, and Manfred turned to Roelfi 'Take her away now,' he ordered. 'I have finished with her at last." During the long journey back to Stellenbosch Sarah huddled in the passenger seat and sobbed brokenly. Only when Roelf parked the Morris outside their cottage did she straighten up, and her voice and her face were ruined with griefi 'I hate him,' she. repeated. 'Oh God, how I hate him." 'I spoke to David Abrahams this morning,' Isabella said, leaning forward in the saddle to pat the mare's neck so that her father couldn't see her face. 'He offered me a job at the Johannesburg office." 'Correction,' said Shasa.

'You telephoned David and told him that Johannesburg needed a PRO at a salary of two thousand a month plus dress allowance plus five-day week and a company car - and I believe you even stipulated the make, Porsche 911, wasn't it? David called me the minute you hung up." 'Oh Daddy, don't be so technical." Isabella tossed her head defiantly. 'You wouldn't want me to dress in rags and starve up there would you?" 'What I would want is for you to stay here where I can keep an eye on you." Shasa felt the leaden weight of impending loss in his chest as he looked at her. She was the spice of his life, and she had only been back from London a month or so. Now she wanted to be off again. His instinct was to fight to keep her, but Centaine had advised, 'Let them go gently, and there is a chance they will come back to you." 'It isn't Siberia or the Outer Hebrides, Daddy. Do be practical.

It's just up the road." 'A thousand miles up the road,' Shasa agreed. 'And much closer' to the rugby stadium at Loftus Versveld." 'I don't know what you mean." It was very seldom Shasa could catch her off-balance, and vindictively he relished her agitation.

'Rugby football,' he explained. 'Great sweaty oafs beating their bony heads together." She recovered splendidly. 'Pater, if this has anything to do with Lothar De La Rey, I would just like to point out that he is one of the greatest athletes of our time and the youngest brigadier in the history of the police force - and that he means absolutely nothing to me at all." 'Your indifference is monumental. I am greatly relieved." 'Does that mean I can accept David's job offer?" Shasa sighed and the loneliness descended upon him like a winter's evening. 'How can I stop you, Bella?" She let out a triumphant squeal and leaned out of the saddle to wrap those long tanned arms around his neck, and Shasa's stallion danced under him with aristocratic affront.

Isabella chattered merrily all the way back to the chfiteau.

'One thing I forgot to mention to David was a lusing allowance.

Flats are so awfully expensive in Joey's. I couldn't find anything suitable on the pittance he is paying me." Shasa shook his head with admiration.

The grooms were waiting in the kitchen yard to take the horses, and still in their jodhpurs and riding boots they went through to the breakfast room with Isabella hanging lovingly on her father's arm.

Centaine was at the sideboard, helping herself to scrambled eggs

:: ill from the chafing dish. She was still in her gardening clothes and hid been amongst her roses since dawn. Now she looked at Isabella i quiringly - and Isabella gave her a happy wink.

'Damn it,' Shasa intercepted the exchange. 'I've been set up. It's conspiracy." 'Of course, I told Nana first." Isabella hugged his arm. 'I alwa start at the top." 'When she was little I always threatened to hand her over to policeman if she was naughty,' Centaine said complacently as sl carried her plate to the breakfast table. 'I hope this policeman ca cope with her." 'He's not a policeman,' Isabella protested. 'He's a brigadier." Shasa ladled eggs and fried tomato on to his plate and went to hid place at the head of the table. The morning paper was folded neatly o his side plate, and he shook it open at the front page as he sat dowl The main news was the proposed meeting between the British prim minister, Harold Wilson, and Ian Smith to settle the Rhodesian issm Now he saw that the suggested venue was a British warship at se Israel and Jordan were still disputing the Hebron Valley, and closer t home the Robben Island ferry had capsized during the night with th certain loss of at least two lives, while eight others were missing.

The telephone on the sideboard rang and Centaine looked up fror buttering her toast. 'That will be Garry,' she said. 'He rang twic while you were out riding." 'It's only eight o'clock in the morning,' Shasa protested, but hid, went to answer the telephone. 'Hello, Garry, where are you?" Garry sounded surprised. 'At the office, of course." 'What's the problem?" 'Swimming-pools,' Garry answered. 'I have a chance to get th franchise for a new process of making cheap swimming-pools. It' called Gunite. Holly and I saw it when we were on honeymoon ir the States." 'Good Lord, only the ver2 rich can afford private swimming.

pools,' Shasa protested.

'Everybody will buy my swimming-pools - every home in the country will have one by the time I'm finished." Garry's enthusiasm was infectious.

'It works, Pater. I've seen it, and the figures add up perfectly.

Only trouble is I have to give an answer by noon today. Someone else is interested." 'How much?" Shasa asked.

'Four million initially - that's for the franchise and plant. Another four million over two years for running costs, then we will be into profit." 'All right,' Shasa said. 'Go ahead." 'Thanks, Pater. Thanks for trusting me." 'Well you haven't let me down yet. How is Holly?" 'She's fine. She's right here with me." 'At the office at eight in the morning?" Shasa laughed.

'Of course." Again Garry sounded surprised. 'We are a team. The swimming-pools were her idea." 'Give her my love,' Shasa said and hung up.

As he went back to his seat, Centaine said, 'It's the prime minister's budget vote this afternoon. I thought I'd drop in." 'It should be interesting,' Shasa agreed. 'I think Verwoerd is going to make a major policy speech about the country's international position. I have a committee meeting on armaments this morning, but why don't you meet me for lunch and you can listen to Doctor Henk's speech from the public gallery afterwards. I'll ask Tricia to get you a ticket." Ticia was waiting for him anxiously when an hour later Shasa walked into his parliamentary suite.

'The minister of police wants to see you most urgently, Mr Courthey. He asked me to let him know the moment you arrived. He said he'd come to your office." 'Very well." Shasa glanced at his appointment book on her desk.

'Let him know I'm here and then get a ticket for my mother for the public gallery this afternoon. Is there anything else?" 'Nothing important." Tricia picked up the in-house telephone to ring the minister of police's office and then paused. 'There has been a strange woman ringing you this morning. She called three times.

She wouldn't give her name and she asked for Squadron Leader Courtney. Funny, isn't it?" 'All right, let me know if she calls again." Shasa was frowning as he went through to his own office. The use of his old airforce rank was strangely disquieting. He went to his desk and began work on the mail and the memoranda that Tricia had placed on his blotter, but almost immediately the buzzer rang on his intercom.

'Minister De La Rey is here, sir." 'Ask him to come right in, Tricia." Shasa rose and went to meet Manfred, but as they shook hands he could see that Manfred was a worried man.

'Did you read the news report about the sinking of the ferry?" Manfred did not even return his greeting but came immediately to business.

'I noticed it, but didn't read it all." 'Moses Gama was on the boat when it sank,' Manfred said.

'Good Lord." Shasa glanced involuntarily at the ivory and gold}: !!

,[

leaf altar chest which still stood against the wall of his office.

'Is hid safe?" 'He is missing,' Manfred said. 'He may have drowned, or he ma be alive. Either way we are in a very serious predicament." 'Escaped?" Shasa asked.

'One of the survivors, a prison officer, says that there were two vessels at the accident scene, a large ship without lights that collidec with the ferry and another smaller craft that arrived seconds artel the ferry capsized. In the darkness it was impossible to see any details It is a distinct possibility that Gama was spirited away." 'If he drowned, we will be accused of murdering him,' Shasa saic softly, 'with disastrous international repercussions." 'And if he is at large, we will face the possibility of a populm uprising of the blacks similar to Longa and Sharpeville." 'What are you doing about it?" Shasa asked.

'The entire police force is on full alert. One of our best men, m) own son Lothar, is flying down from the Witwatersrand in an airforce jet to take charge of the investigation. He will land within the next few minutes. Navy divers are already attempting to salvage the wreckage of the ferry." For another ten minutes they discussed all the implications of the wreck, and then Manfred moved to the door.

'I will keep you informed as we get further news." Shasa followed him into the outer office, and as they passed Tricia's desk she stood up.

'Oh, Mr Courtney, that woman called again while you were with Minister De La Rey." Manfred and Shasa both paused, and Tricia went on, 'She asked for Squadron Leader Courtney again, sir, and when I told her you were in conference, she said she had news for you about White Sword. She said you'd understand." 'White Sword!" Shasa froze and stared at her. 'Did she leave a number?" 'No, sir, but she said that )ou must meet her at the Cape Town railway station at five-thirty this afternoon. Platform four." 'How will I know who she is?" 'She says she knows you by sight. You are merely to wait on the platform, she will come to you." Shasa was so preoccupied with the message that he did not notice Manfred De La Rey's reaction to the code name 'White Sword'. All colour had drained from Manfred's craggy features, and his upper lip and jowls were covered by a sheen of perspiration. Without another word he turned and strode out into the corridor.

The name 'White Sword' kept plaguing Shasa all though the Armscor meeting. They were discussing the new air-to-ground missiles for the airforce but Shasa found it difficult to concentrate. He was plagued by the memory of his grandfather, that good and gentle man whom Shasa had loved and who had been murdered by White Sword. His death had been one of the fiercest tragedies of his young life, and the rage that he had felt at the brutal killing came back to him afresh.

'White Sword,' he thought. 'If I can find out who you are, even after all these years, you will pay, and the interest will be more onerous for the time the debt has stood." Manfred De La Rey went directly to his office at the end of the corridor after he had left Shasa. His secretary spoke to him as he passed her desk but he did not seem to hear her.

He locked the door to his own office, but did not sit at the massive mahogany desk. He prowled the floor restlessly, his eyes unseeing and his heayy jaws chewing like a bulldog with a bone. He took the handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his chin and then paused to examine his face in the wall mirror behind his desk. He was so pale that his cheeks had a bluish sheen, and his eyes were savage as those of a wounded leopard caught in a trap.

'White Sword,' he whispered aloud. It was twenty-five years since he had used that code name, but he remembered standing on the bridge of the German U-boat, coming in towards the land in darkness, with his hair and great bushy beard ded black, staring out at the signal fires on the beach where Roelf Stander waited for him.

Roelf Stander had been with him through all the dangerous days and the wild endeavours. They had planned many of their operations in the kitchen of the Stander cottage in the little village of Stellenbosch. It was there in that kitchen that he had given them the details of the action that would be the signal for the glorious uprising of Afrikaner patriots. And at all those meetings Sarah Stander had been present, a quiet unobtrusive presence, serving coffee and food, never speaking - but listening. It was only many years later that Manfred had been able to guess at how well she had listened.

In 1948, when the Afrikaners had at last won at the ballot box the power which they had failed to seize at the point of the sword, Manfred's hard and loyal work had been rewarded with a deputy minister's post in the department of justice.

One of his first acts had been to send for the files of the unsolved attempt on the life of Jan Smuts, and the murder of Sir Garrick Courtney. Before he destroyed the files he read them through carefully, and he learned that they had been betrayed. There had been a traitor in their gallant band of patriots - a woman who had telephoned the Smuts police officers to warn them of the assassination.

He had guessed at the woman's identity, but had never extracted his full retribution, waiting for the moment to ripen, savouring the thought of revenge over the decades, watching the traitor's misery, watching her growing old and bitter, while frustrating her husband's efforts to succeed in law and politics, in the guise of mentor and adviser, steering him into folly and disaster until Roelf Stander had lost all his sustenance, his property and his will to carry on. All that time Manfred had waited for the perfect moment for the final revenge stroke - and at last it had arrived. Sarah Stander had come to him to plead for the life of the bastard he had placed in her womb - and he had denied her. The pleasure of it had been exquisite, made more poignant by the years he had waited for it.

Now the woman had turned vindictive. He had not anticipated that.

He had expected the blow to break and destroy her. Only the greatest good fortune had given him forewarning of this new betrayal she planned.

He turned from the mirror and sat down at his desk. He reached determinedly for the telephone and told his secretary, 'I want Colonel Bester in the bureau for state security." Bester was one of his most trusted officers.

'Bester,' he barked. 'I want a detention order drawn up urgently.

I will sign it myself, and I want it executed immediately." 'Yes, Minister. Can you give me the name of the detainee?" 'Sarah Stander,' Manfred said. 'Her address is 16 Eike Loan, Stellenbosch. If the arresting officers cannot find her there, she should be on platform four of the Cape Town railway station at five-thirty p.m. this afternoon. The woman must speak to no one before she is arrested - your men must make certain of that." As Manfred hung up he smiled grimly. Under the law he had the power to arrest and detain any persons for ninety days, and to hold that person completely incommunicado. A great deal could happen in ninety days. Things could change, a person might even die. It was all taken care of. The woman could cause no further trouble.

The telephone on his desk rang, and Manfred snatched it up, expecting it to be Bester again. 'Yes, what is it?" 'Pa, it's me - Lothie." 'Yes, Lothie. Where are you?" 'Caledon Square. I landed twenty minutes ago, and I have taken over the investigation. There is news, Pa. The divers have found the ferry. There is no sign of the prisoner's body but the cabin door has been forced open. We must assume that he escaped. Worse than that, somebody engineered his escape." 'Find him,' Manfred said softly. 'You must find Moses Gama. If we don't, the consequences could be disastrous." 'I know,' Lothar said. 'We will find him. We have to find him." Centaine refused to eat the food in the parliamentary dining-room.

'It's not that I am fussy, ch6ri, in the desert I ate live locusts and meat that had lain four days in the sun, but --' She and Shasa walked down through the gardens, across the top end of town to the Car Royal on Greenmarket Square, where the first oysters of the season had arrived from Knysna lagoon.

Centaine sprinkled lemon juice and tabasco sauce, scooped a gently pulsating mouthful from the half shell and sighed with pleasure.

'And now, ch6ri,' she dabbed the juice from her lips, 'tell me why yca are so far away that you do not laugh at even my best efforts." 'I'm sorry, Mater." Shasa signalled to the waiter to top up his champagne glass. 'I had a strange phone call this morning - and I haven't been able to concentrate on anything else. Do you remember White Sword?" 'How can you ask?" Centaine laid down her fork. 'Sir Garry was more dear to me than my own father. Tell me all about it." They spoke of nothing else for the rest of the lunch, exploring together ancient memories of that terrible day on which a noble and generous man had died, a man who had been precious to them both.

At last Shasa called for the bill. 'It's half past one already. We will have to hurry to reach the House before it begins. I don't want to miss any part of Verwoerd's speech." At sixty-six years of age Centaine was still active and agile, and Shasa was not forced to moderate his stride for her. They were still talking animatedly as they passed St George's Cathedral and turned into the gardens.

Ahead of them two men sat on one of the park benches, and there was something about them that caught Shasa's attention even at a distance of a hundred yards. The taller of the pair was a swarthycomplexioned man who wore the uniform of a parliamentary messenger. He sat very stiffly upright and stared straight ahead of him with a fixed expression.

The man beside him was also dark-haired but his face was colourless as putty, the dead black hair fell forward on to his forehead. He was leaning close to the parliamentary messenger, speaking into his ear as though imparting a secret, but the messenger's face was expressionless and he showed not the least reaction to the other man's words.

As they came level with the bench, Shasa leaned forward to see

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past Centaine, and at less than five paces looked directly into tl pale face of the smaller of the men. His eyes were black and impla able as pools of liquid tar, but as Shasa studied him, the m deliberately turned his face away. Yet his lips kept moving, talkir so softly to the man in the parliamentary uniform that Shasa couJ not catch even a murmur of his voice.

Centaine tugged at his sleeve. 'Chri, you are not listening to me 'I'm sorry, Mater,' Shasa apologized absentmindedly.

'I wonder why this woman chose the railway station,' Centair repeated.

'I suppose she feels safer in a public place,' Shasa hazarded, an glanced back over his shoulder. The two men were still on the benct but even in his preoccupation with other things, the passionle, malevolence that Shasa had seen in that tar-black gaze made hir shiver as though an icy wind had blown upon the back of his neck As they turned into the lane that led to the massive edifice of pm liament, Shasa felt suddenly confused and uncertain. There was to, much happening all around him over which he had no control. I was a sensation to which he was not accustomed.

Joe Cicero whispered the formula soly, 'You can feel the worm ii your belly." 'Yes,' the man beside him replied, staring straight ahead.

Only hi lips moved as he made the reply, 'I can feel the worm." 'The worm asks if you have the knife." 'Yes, I have the knife,' said the man. His father had been a Greek and he had been born illegitimate in Portuguese Mozambique of a Mulatto woman. His mixed blood was not apparent. It seemed merely as though he was of Mediterranean extraction. Only Europeans were employed as messengers in the South African parliament.

'You can feel the worm in your belly,' Joe Cicero reinforced the man's conditioning.

'Yes, I can feel the worm." Eight times in the past few years he had been in mental institutions.

It was while he was in the last of these that he had been selected and the conditioning of his mind accomplished.

'The worm asks if you know where to find the devil,' Joe Cicero told him. The man's name was Demetrio Tsafendas and he had been introduced into South Africa the previous year, once his conditioning was completed.

'Yes,' said Tsafendas. 'I know where to find the devil." 'The worm in your belly orders you to go straight to where the devil is,' Joe Cicero said softly. 'The worm in your belly orders you to kill the devil." Tsafendas stood up. He moved like an automaton.

'The worm orders you to go now!" Tsafendas started towards the parliament building with an even unhurried tread.

Joe Cicero watched him go. It was done. All the pieces had been placed with great care. At last the first boulder had started to roll down the hillside. It would gather others as it built up speed and momenttim, goon it would be a mighty avalanche and the shape of the mountain would be changed for ever.

Joe Cicero stood up and walked away.

The first person Shasa saw as he and Centaine walked up the front steps to the parliament entrance was Kitty Godolphin and his heart surged with excitement and unexpected pleasure. He hadn't seen her since that illicit interlude in the south of France eighteen months before. Shasa had chartered a luxury yacht and they had cruised as far as Capri. When they parted, she had promised to write - but she never kept her promises, and here she was again with no warning, smiling that sweet girlish smile with the devilment in her eyes, coming to greet him as innocently and naturally as though their last kiss had been hours before.

'What are you doing here?" he demanded without any preliminaries, and Kitty said to Centaine, 'Hello, Mrs Courtney. How did such a nice cultured lady ever end up with such an ill-mannered son?" Centaine laughed, she liked Kitty. Shasa thought that it was a case of kindred spirits. Kitty explained, 'I was in Rhodesia to get a profile on Ian Smithy before he meets Harold Wilson, and I made a side trip for the speech that Verwoerd is giving today, and of course to visit with you." They chatted for a few minutes, then Centaine excused herselfi 'I must get a good seat in the gallery." As she moved awiy Shasa asked Kitty softly, 'When can I see you?" 'This evening?" Kitty suggested.

'Yes - oh no, damn it." He remembered his rendezvous with the White*Sword informer. 'Where are you staying?" 'The Nellie as usual." 'Can I call you there later?" 'Sure,' she smiled. 'Unless I get any better offers." 'You little bitch! Why don't you marry me?" 'I'm too good for you, buster." It had become one of their stock jokes. 'But I don't mind an order of small beer and chips on the side.

See you later:'

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Shasa watched her climb the staircase towards the press galler) Over all the years he had known her, she seemed not to have aged day. She still had the body of a girl, and the light spring of youth iJ her step. He pushed back the sudden cold gloom of loneliness that threatened to engulf him and walked into the chamber.

The benches were filling. Shasa saw that the prime minister was il his seat at the head of the government benches. He was talking t Frank Waring, the minister of sport, and the only other Englishmai in the cabinet.

Verwoerd looked fit and vigorous. It seemed impossible that hid had taken two revolver bullets through his skull and had come bach with such power to dominate his own party and the entire chambeJ this way. He seemed to have an infinite capacity for survival and, oJ course, Shasa grinned cynically, the luck of the devil himself.

Shasa started towards his own seat, and Manfred DeLa jumped up and came to intercept him.

He seized Shasa's arm and leaned close to him. 'The divers have raised the ferry. Gama's body is not in it and the door to the cabin has been forced. It looks as though the bastard has got clean away.

But we have every exit from the country guarded and my men will get him. He cannot get away. I think the prime minister is going to make the announcement of his disappearance during his speech this afternoon." Shasa and Manfred began walking towards their seats on the front bench, when somebody bumped so roughly against Shasa that he exclaimed and glanced around. It was the uniformed messenger that Shasa had noticed on the park bench.

'Be careful, fellow,' Shasa snapped at him as he recovered his balance, but the man did not seem to hear.

Although his expression was vacant and his eyes staring and unseeing, the-messenger walked with a quick determined step, brushing past Manfred and heading towards the opposition benches on the left side of the Speaker's throne.

'Damned rude,' Shasa said, pausing to watch him.

Suddenly the messenger seemed to change his mind, he veered across the chamber and hurried towards where Dr Verwoerd was sitting. The prime minister saw him coming and looked up expectantly, supposing that the man had a message for him. Nobody else in the chamber seemed to be taking any notice of the messenger's erratic behaviour, but Shasa was watching with puzzlement.

As the messenger stood over Dr Verwoerd, he swept his dark uniform jacket open and Shasa saw the silver flash of steel. 'Good Christ!" he exclaimed. 'He's got a knife." The messenger lifted the blade and struck once, and strangely the prime minister was smiling, as though he did not realize what was happening. The blade came free and the silver was misted pink with blood.

Shasa started forward, but Manfred still had hold of his arm. 'The Manchurian Candidate,' he hissed and Shasa froze.

Standing over the prime minister, the assassin struck again and then again. With each blow the blood spurted down his white shirt front and Dr Verwoerd lifted his hands in a pathetic gesture of appeal.

At last the men closest to him realized what was happening and they leapt upon the assailant. A knot of struggling men swarmed over him, but the man was fighting back with a kind of demonic strength.

'Where is the Devil?" he shouted wildly. 'I'll get the Devil." They bore him to the green carpet and pinned him there.

Dr Verwoerd still sat in his seat staring down at his own chest from which the bright flood poured. Then he pulled the lapels of his jacket closed as though to hide the terrible sight of his own blood, and with a sigh slid forward and crumpled on to the carpeted floor of the chamber.

Shasa and Manfred De La Rey were in Shasa's parliamentary office when Tricia brought the news through.

'Gentlemen, the party whip has just telephoned. Dr Verwoerd has been declared dead on arrival at the Volks Hospital." Shasa went to the liquor cabinet behind his desk and poured two glasses of cognac.

They watched each other's eyes as they drank silently, and then Shasa lowered his glass and said, 'We must start at once to draw up a list of those we can rely on to support you. I think John Vorster is the man you will have to beat for the premiership, and his people will already be busy." They worked together through the afternoon preparing their lists, placing ticks and crosses and queries against the names. Telephoning, wheedling and extorting, arranging meetings, making promises and commitments, trading and compromising, and as the afternoon wore on a stream of important visitors, allies and potential allies, passed through Shasa's suite.

While they worked, Shasa watched Manfred, and wondered again how fate had chosen such strange travelling companions as they were.

It seemed that they had nothing in common except that one most vital trait - burning unrelenting ambition and hunger for power.

Well, it was at their fingertips now, almost within their grasp, and Manfred was a man possessed. The effect of his enormous force of character was apparent on the men who came up to Shasa's office ji ii

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suite. One by one they were swept along by it, and one by one they swore their allegiance to him.

Slowly it dawned upon Shasa that it was no longer a possibilityor even a probability. They were going to win. He knew in his guts and his heart. It was theirs - the premiership and the presidency between them. They were going to win.

In the heady excitement of it all the afternoon passed swiftly, the grandfather clock in the corner of Shasa's office chimed the hours softly, such a familiar sound that he hardly noticed it until it struck five and he started and jumped to his feet, confirming the time with his wristwatch.

'It's five o'clock." He started towards the door.

'Where are you going? I need you here,' Manfred called after him.

'Come back, Shasa." 'I'll be back,' Shasa answered, and ran into the outer office.

There were men waiting there, important men. They stood up to greet him, and Tricia called, 'Mr Courtney--' 'Not now." Shasa ran past them. 'I'll be back soon." It would be quicker on foot than trying to take the Jaguar through the five o'clock rush-hour traffic, and Shasa began to run.

He realized that the woman informer was so nervous and afraid that she would probably not linger at the rendezvous. He had to get there before the appointed time. As he ran he reviled himself for having forgotten such an important appointment, but it was all confusion and uncertainty.

He raced down the sidewalk, crowded with office workers relieved of the tedium of their day who poured out of the buildings. Shasa pushed and shoved, and weaved and ducked. Some of those he barged into shouted angrily after him.

He sprinted through the columns of slowly moving vehicles, and ran into the Adderley Street entrance of the railway station. The clock above the main concourse stood at five thirty-seven. He was already late, and platform four was at the far end of the building.

Wildly he raced down the concourse, and barged on to the quay.

He slowed to a hurried walk, and made his way down the platform, examining the faces of the commuters waiting there. They stared back at him incuriously, and he glanced up at the platform clock: five-forty. Ten minutes late. She had come and gone. He had missed her.

He stood in the centre of the platform and looked despairingly around him, not certain what to do next. Overhead the public address system squawked, 'Train from Stellenbosch and the Cape Flats arriving Platform Four." That was it, of course. Shasa felt a vast relief. The train was late.

She must be on the train, that was why she had chosen this place and time.

Shasa craned his head anxiously as the carriages rumbled slowly into the platform and, with a squeal and hiss of vacuum brakes, came to a halt. The doors were thrown open and passengers spewed out of them, beginning to move in a solid column towards the platform exit.

Shasa jumped up on the nearest bench, the better to see and to be seen.

'Mr Courtney." A woman's voice. Her voice - he recognized it, even after all the years. 'Mr Courtney." He stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the heads of the passengers.

'Mr Courtney!" There she was, caught up in the crowd, trying to push her way through to him, and waving frantically to attract his attention.

He recognized her instantly. The shock immobilized him for a few seconds as he stared at her. It was the Stander woman, the one he had met briefly at Manfred's holiday cottage when he had flown there to make the cannery deal with him. That was years ago, but he remembered that she had called him Squadron Leader. He should have pieced it together at that time. How foolish and unperceptive he had been. Shasa was still standing on the bench staring at her, when suddenly something else caught his attention.

Two men were roughly pushing their way through the crowds of passengers. Two big men in dark ill-fitting suits and the fedora hats that were somehow the mark of the plain-clothes security police.

Clearly they were making for the Stander woman.

At the same moment as Shasa, she saw the two detectives and her face went white with terror.

'Mr Courtney!" she screamed. 'Quickly - they are after me." She broke out of the crowd and began to run towards Shasa. 'Hurry, please hurry." Shasa jumped down from the bench and ran to meet her, but there was an old woman carrying an armful of parcels in his way. He almost knocked her down, and in the moments it took to untangle himself, the two detective had caught up with Sarah Stander, and seized her from either side.

'Please!" She gave a despairing scream, then with wild, improbable strength broke free of her captors, and ran the last few paces to Shasa.

'Here!" She thrust an envelope into Shasa's hand. 'Here it is." The two security officers had recovered swiftly and bounded after her. One of them seized both her arms from behind and dragged her away. The other came to confront Shasa.

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'We are police officers. We have a warrant for the arrest of the woman." He was panting with his efforts. 'She gave something to you. I saw it. You must hand it over to me." 'My good man!" Shasa drew himself up and gave the detective hi, most haughty stare. 'Do you have any idea just who you are speaking to?" 'Minister Courtney!" The man recognized him then, and his confusion was comic. 'I'm sorry, sir. I didn't know --' 'What is your name, rank and serial number?" Shasa snapped.

'Lieutenant Van Outshoorn No. 138643." Instinctively the man stood to attention.

'You can be sure you will hear more of this, Lieutenant,' Shasa warned him frostily. 'Now carry on with your other duties." Shasa turned on his heel and strode away down the platform, tucking the envelope into his inner pocket, leaving the detective staring after him in dismay.

He did not open the envelope until he reached his office again.

Tricia was still waiting for him.

'I was so worried when you ran out like that,' she cried. Good, loyal Tricia.

'It's all right,' he reassured her. 'It all worked out fine. Where is Minister De La Rey?" 'He left soon after you, sir. He said he would be at home at Groote Schuur. You could reach him there if you needed him." 'Thank you, Tricia. You may go home now." Shasa went through to his own office and locked the door. 'He went to his desk and sat down in his studded leather chair. He took the envelope from his inner pocket and laid it in front of him on the desk blotter, and he studied it.

It was of cheap coarse paper, and his name was written in a round girlish hand. The ink had smeared and run. 'Meneer Courtney." Shasa was suddenly relucta to touch it again. He had a premonition of some terrible revelation which would turn the even tenor of his existence into strife and turmoil.

He picked up the Georgian silver paper knife from his desk set and tested the point with his thumb. He turned the envelope over and slid the point of the knife under the flap. The envelope contained a sheet of ruled notepaper with a single line of writing in the same girlish script.

Shasa stared at it. There was no sense of shock. Deep in his subconscious he must have known the truth all along. It was the eyes, of course, the yellow topaz eyes of White Sword that had stared into his own on the day his grandfather died.

There was not even a moment of doubt, no twinge of incredulity.

He had even seen the scar, the ancient gun-shot wound in Manfred's body, the mark of the bullet he had fired at White Sword and every other detail fitted perfectly.

'Manfred De La Rey is White Sword." From the moment they had first met that childhood day upon the fishing jetty at Walvis Bay, the fates had stalked them, driving them inexorably towards their destiny.

'We were born to destroy each other,' Shasa said softly, and reached for the telephone.

It rang three times before it was answered.

'De La Rey." 'It's me,' Shasa said.

'Ja. I have been waiting." Manfred's voice was weary and resigned, in bitter contrast to the powerful tones in which he had exhorted and rallied his supporters just a short while before. 'The woman reached y-)u. My men have informed me." 'The woman must be set free,' Shasa told him.

'It has been done already. On my orders." 'We must meet." 'Ja. It is necessary." 'Where?" Shasa asked. 'When?" 'I will come to Weltevreden,' Manfred said, and Shasa was taken too much by surprise to respond. 'But there is one condition." 'What is your condition?" Shasa asked warily.

'Your mother must be there when we meet." 'My mother?" This time Shasa could not contain his amazement.

'Yes, your mother - Centaine Courtney." 'I don't understand - what has my mother got to do with this business?" 'Everything,' said Manfred heavily. 'She has everything to do with it." When Kitty Godolphin got back to her suite that evening, she was in a mood of jubilation. Under her direction, Hank's camera had captured the dramatic moments as the blood-stained body of Dr Verwoerd was carried from the chamber to the waiting ambulance, and she had recorded the panic and confusion, the spontaneous unrehearsed words and expressions of his friends and his bitter enemies.

The moment she entered the suite, she booked a call through to her news editor at NABS in New York to warn him of the priceless footage she had obtained. Then she poured herself a gin and tonic ?, / and sat impatiently beside the telephone waiting for her call to come through.

She lifted it as it rang.

'Kitty Godolphin,' she said.

'Miss Godolphin." A strange voice, speaking with a deep melodiou, African accent, greeted her. 'Moses Gama sends you his greetings." 'Moses Gama is serving a life sentence in a high security prison,' Kitty replied brusquely. 'Don't waste my time, please." 'Last night Moses Gama was rescued by warriors of the Umkhonto we Sizwe from the Robben Island prison ferry,' said the voice, and Kitty felt the flesh of her cheeks and lips go numb with the shock of it. She had read the reports of the ferry sinking. 'Moses Gama is in a safe place. He wishes to speak to the world through you. If you agree to meet him, you will be allowed to use your camera to record his message." For a full three seconds she could not answer. Her voice had failed her but her mind was racing. 'This is the big one,' she thought. 'This is the one that comes only once in a lifetime of work and striving." She cleared her throat and said, 'I will come." 'A dark blue van will arrive at the ballroom entrance to the hotel in ten minutes from now. The driver will flick his lights twice. You are to enter the rear doors of the van immediately, without speaking to any person." The vehicle was a small Toyota delivery van, and Kitty and Hank with the sound and camera equipment were cramped in the interior so that it was difficult to move, but Kitty crawled forward until she could speak to the driver. 'Where are we going?" The driver glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. He was a young black man of striking appearance, not handsome but with a powerful African face.

'We are going into the townships. There will be police patrols and road-blocks. The police are everywhere searching for Moses Gama.

It will be dangerous, so you must do exactly as I tell you." For almost an hour they were in the van, driving through darkened back streets, sometimes stopping and waiting in silence until a, shadowy figure came out of the night to whisper a few words to the driver of the van, then going on again until at last they parked for the last time.

'From here we walk,' their guide told them, and led them down the alleys and secret routes of the gangs and comrades, slipping past the rows of township cottages, twice hiding while police Land-Rovers cruised past, and finally entering the back door of one of the thousands of identical undistinguished cottages.

Moses Gama sat at a table in the tiny back kitchen. Kitty recognized him instantly although his hair was now almost completely silver and his great frame was skeletally wasted. He wore a white open-neck shirt and dark blue slacks, and as he rose to greet her, she saw that though he had aged and his body was ravaged, the commanding presence and his messianic dark gaze were as powerful as when she had first met him.

'I am grateful that you have come,' he told her gravely. 'But we have very little time. The fascist police follow closely as a pack of wolves. I have to leave here within a short while." Hank was already at work, setting up his camera and lights, and he nodded to Kitty. She saw that the gritty reality of the surroundings, the bare walls and plain unadorned wooden furniture would add drama to the setting, and Moses' silver hair and enfeebled condition would touch the hearts of her audience.

She had prepared a few questions in her mind, but they were unnecessary. Moses Gama looked at the camera and spoke with a sincerity and depth that was devastating.

'There are no prison walls thick enough to hold the longing of my people for freedom,' he said. 'There is no grave deep enough to keep the truth from you." He spoke for ten minutes and Kitty Godolphin who was old in experience and hardened in the ways of a naughty world was weeping unashamedly as he ended, 'The struggle is my life. The battle belongs to us. We will prevail, my people. Amandla! Ngawethu!" Kitty went to him and embraced him. 'You make me feel very humble,' she said.

'You are a friend,' he replied. 'Go in peace, my daughter." 'Come." Raleigh Tabaka took Kitty's arm and led her away. 'You have stayed too long already. You must leave now. This man's name is Robert. He will lead you." Robert was waiting at the kitchen door of the cottage.

'Follow me,' he ordered, and led them across the bare dusty backyard, through the shadows to the corner of the road. There he stopped unexpectedly.

'What happens now?" Kitty asked in a whisper. 'Why are we waiting here?" 'Be patient,' Robert said. 'You will learn the reason soon." Suddenly Kitty was aware that they were not alone. There were others waiting like them in the shadows. She could hear them now, the murmur of voices, quiet but expectant. She could see them as her eyes adjusted to the night, many figures, in small groups, huddled beside the hedges or in the shelter of the buildings.

Dozens, no hundreds of people, men and women, and every

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moment their numbers increased as more came out of the night shadows, gathering round the cottage that contained Moses Gama, as though his presence was a beacon, a flame that, like moths, they could not resist.

'What is happening?" Kitty asked softly.

'You will see,' Robert replied. 'Have your camera ready." The people were beginning to leave the shadows, creeping closer to the cottage, and a voice called out 'Babo! Your children are here. Speak to us, Father." And another cried. 'Moses Gama, we are ready. Lead us!" And then they began to sing, softly at first, 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - God save Africa!" and the voices joined and began to harmonize, those beautiful African voices, thrilling and wonderful.

Then there was another sound, distant at first, but swiftly growing closer, the sobbing undulating wall of police sirens.

'Have your camera ready,' said Robert again.

As soon as the American woman and her cameraman had left the cottage, Moses Gama began to rise from the table. 'It is done,' he said. 'Now we can leave." 'Not yet, my uncle,' Raleigh Tabaka stopped him. 'There is something else that we must do first." 'It is dangerous to delay,' Moses insisted. 'We have been in this place too long. The police have informers everywhere." 'Yes, my uncle. The police informers are everywhere." Raleigh put a peculiar emphasis on his agreement. 'But before you go on to the place where the police cannot touch you, we must talk." Raleigh came to stand at the front of the table facing his uncle.