Rage - Smith Wilbur (книги читать бесплатно без регистрации .TXT) 📗
'How many innocents have died for what other men call "just causes"? How many atrocities have been committed in God's name?" 'You cannot provoke me." Manfred shook his head. 'What I attempted was right and proper." 'We shall see whether or not the courts of this land agree with you,' Shasa said, and looked across the room to Centaine. 'Please ring the number on the pad in front of you, Mater. Ask for Colonel Bothma of CID. I have already asked him to be available to come here." Centaine made no move, and her expression, as she studied Manfred De La Rey, was tragic.
'Please do it, Mater,' Shasa insisted.
'No,' Manfred intervened. 'She cannot do it - and nor can you." 'Why do you believe that?" 'Tell him, Mother,' said Manfred.
Shasa frowned quickly and angrily, but Centaine held up her hand to stop him speaking.
'It is true,' she whispered. 'Manfred is as much my son as you are, Shasa. I gave birth to him in the desert. Although his father took him still wet and blind from my child bed, although I did not see him again for almost thirteen years, .he is still my son." In the silence one of the logs in the fireplace fell in a soft shower of ash and it sounded like an avalanche.
'Your grandfather has been dead for twenty years and more, Shasa. Do you want to break my heart by sending your brother to the gallows?" 'My duty - my honour,' Shasa faltered.
'Manfred was as merciful once. Hehad it in his power to destroy your political career before it began. At my request and in the knowledge that you were brothers, he spared you." Centaine was speaking softly, but remorselessly. 'Can you do less?" 'But - he is only your bastard,' Shasa blurted.
'You are my bastard also, Shasa. Your father was killed on our wedding day, before the ceremony. That was the fact that Manfred could have used to destroy you. He had you in his power - as he is now in your power. What will you do, Shasa?" Shasa turned away from her, and stood with his head bowed staring into the fireplace. When he spoke at last, his voice was racked with pain.
'The friendship - the brotherhood even - all of it is an illusion,' he said. 'It is you, Mater, whom I must honour." No one replied to him, and he turned back to Manfred.
'You will inform the caucus of the National Party that you are not available for the premiership and you will retire from public life he said quietly, and saw Manfred flinch and the ruination of hi dreams in the agony of his expression. 'That is the only punishmen I can inflict upon you, but perhaps it is more painful and lingerin than the gallows. Do you accept it?" 'You are destroying yourself at the same time,' Manfred told him 'Without me the presidency is beyond your grasp." 'That is my punishment,' Shasa agreed. 'I accept it. Do you accep yours?" 'I accept,' said Manfred De La Rey. He turned to the doubl, mahogany doors, flung them open and strode from the room.
Shasa stared after him. Only when they heard his car pull awa, u down the long driveway did he turn back to Centaine. She wE weeping as she had wept on the day that he brought her the news o Blaine Malcomess' death.
'My son,' she whispered. 'My sons." And he went to comfor her.
A week after the death of Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the caucus of the National Party elected Balthazar Johannes Vorster to the premiership of South Africa.
He owed his elevation to the awe-inspiring reputation that he had built for himself while he was minister of justice. He was a stron man in the mould of his predecessor and in his acceptance speech he stated boldly, 'My role is to walk fearlessly along the road already pointed out by Hendrik Verwoerd." Three days after his election he sent for Shasa Courtney.
'I wanted personally to thank you for your hard work and loyalty over the years, but now I think it is time for you to take a wellearned rest. I would like you to go as the South African ambassador to the Court of St James in London. I know that with you there South Africa House will be in good hands." It was the classic dismissal, but Shasa knew that the golden rule for politicians is never to refuse office.
'Thank you, Prime Minister,' he replied.
Thirty thousand mourners attended the funeral of Moses Gama in Drake's Farm township.
Raleigh Tabaka organized the funeral and was the captain of the honour guard of Umkhonto we Sizwe that stood at the graveside and gave the ANC salute as the coffin was lowered into the earth.
Vicky Dinizulu Gama, dressed in her flowing caftan of yellow and green and black, defied her banning order to make a speech to the mourners.
Fierce and strikingly beautiful, she told them, 'We must devise a death for the collaborators and sell-outs, that is so grotesquely horrible that not one of our people will ever dare to turn traitor upon us." The sorrow of the multitudes was so terrible that when a young woman amongst them was pointed out as a police informer, they stripped her naked and whipped and beat her until she fell unconscious. Then they doused her with petrol and set her alight and kicked her while she burned. Afterwards the children urinated on her charred corpse. The police dispersed the mourners with tear gas and baton-charges.
Kitty Godolphin filmed it all, and when the footage was cut in with the Moses Gama interview and the graphic footage from the scene of his brutal slaying by the police, it was amongst the most gripping and horrifying ever shown on American television.
When Kitty Godolphin was promoted to head of NABS news, she became the highest-paid female editor in American television.
Before taking up his post as ambassador in London, Shasa went on a four-week safari in the Zambezi valley with his eldest son. The Courtney Safaris hunting concession covered five hundred square miles of wonderful game-rich wilderness, and Matatu led Shasa to lion and buffalo and a magnificent old bull elephant.
The Rhodesian bush war was becoming deadly earnest. Sean had been awarded the Silver Cross of Rhodesia for gallantry and around the camp fire he described how he had won it.
'Matatu and I were following a big bull jumbo when we cut the spoor of twelve ZANU gooks. We dropped the jumbo and tracked the terrs. It was pissing with rain and the cloud was on the treetops so the fire force couldn't get in to back us up. The terrs were getting close to the Zambezi so we pushed up on them. The first warning we had that they had set an ambush for us was when we saw the fairy lights in the grass just ahead of us.
'Matatu was leading and he took the first burst in the belly.
That made me fairly bitter and I went after the gooks with the old .577. It was five miles to the river and they ran like the clappers of hell, but I polished off the last two in the water before they could reach the Zambian side. When I turned around, there was Matatu standing right behind me. The little bugger had backed me up for five miles with his tripes hanging out of the hole in his guts." u Across the camp fire the little Ndorobo's face had brightened as he heard his name mentioned, and Sean told him in Swahili, 'Show the Bwana Makuba your new belly button." Obligingly Matatu hoisted his tattered shirt tails and displayed for Shasa the fearsome scars the AK 47 bullets had left on his stomach.
'You are a stupid little bugger,' Sean told him severely, 'running around with a hole in your guts, instead of lying down and dying like you should have. You are bloody stupid, Matatu." Matatu's whole body wriggled with pleasure. 'Bleddy stupid bugger,' he agreed proudly. He knew that this was the highest accolade to which he could possibly aspire, uttered as it was by the godhead of his entire firmament.
While Shasa was still packing his books and paintings for the journey to London, Garry and Holly moved into Weltevreden.
