Power of the Sword c-10 Read online

  I am walking out with one of the women who works for Abraham Abrahams. He was the attorney who conducted all the business of the H'ani Mine in Windhoek. She saw the letters from Mrs Courtney in Cape Town. There is no doubt. The mine is shutting down. They can't sell the diamonds. Nobody is buying diamonds, not even in London and New York. Oh my God! My God! whispered Fourie. What are we going to do? My wife isn't well and we've got the six children. Sweet Jesus, my kids will starve. It's all right for somebody like you. I'll bet you've got a couple of hundred quid saved up. You'll be all right., But Fourie shook his head.

  Well, if you haven't got anything saved, you'd best put a few pounds

  aside before they lay you off in August. How does a man do that?

  How do I save, with a wife and six kids? Fourie demanded hopelessly.

  I tell you what. Lothar took his arm in a friendly concerned grip. Let's get out of here. I'll buy a bottle of brandy.

  Let's go some place where we can talk. The sun was up by the time Lothar got back to the camp the following morning. They had emptied the brandy bottle while they talked the night away. The driver was intrigued tempted by Lothar's proposition but unsure and afraid.

  and Lothar had to explain and convince him of every single point, particularly of his own safety. Nobody will ever be able to point a finger at you. I give you my sacred word on it. You will be protected even if something goes wrong, and nothing will go wrong. Lothar had used all his powers of persuasion, and he was tired now as he trudged through the encampment and squatted down beside Hendrick.

  Coffee? he asked and belched the taste of old brandy into his mouth.

  Finished. Hendrick shook his head.

  Where is Manfred? Hendrick pointed with his chin. Manfred was sitting under a thorn bush at the far end of the camp. The girl Sarah was beside him, their blond heads almost touching as they pored over . a sheet of newsprint. Manfred was writing on the margin of the page with a charcoal stick from the camp fire.

  Manie is teaching her to read and write, Hendrick explained.

  Lothar grunted and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. His head ached from the brandy.

  Well, he said. We've got our man. Ali! Hendrick grinned. 'Then we will need the horses., The private railway coach had once belonged to Cecil Rhodes and the De Beers Diamond Company. Centaine Courtney had purchased it for a fraction of the price that a new carriage would have cost her, a fact that gave her satisfaction. She was still a Frenchwoman and knew the value of a sou and a franc. She had brought out a young designer from Paris to redecorate the carriage in the Art Deco style, which was all the rage, and he had been worth every penny of his fee.

  She looked around the saloon, at the uncluttered lines of the furnishings, at the whimsical nude nymphs which supported the bronze light-fittings and the Aubrey Beardsley designs inlaid with exquisite workmanship into the lightwood panelling and she remembered that the designer had struck her at first as being a homosexual, with his long flowing locks, his darkly decadent eyes and the features of a beautiful, bored and cynical faun. Her first estimate had been far wide of the truth, as she had discovered to her delight on the circular bed which he had installed in the coach's main bedroom suite. She smiled at the memory and then checked the smile as she saw that Shasa was watching her.

  You know, Mater, I sometimes think I can see what you are thinking, just by looking into your eyes. He said these disconcerting things sometimes, and she was sure that he had grown another inch in the last week.

  I certainly hope that you cannot. She shivered. It's cold in here. The designer had incorporated, at enormous expense, a refrigeration machine which cooled the air in the saloon. Do turn that thing off, She stood up from her desk and went out through the frosted glass doors onto the balcony of the coach and the hot desert air rushed at her and flattened her skirts across her narrow boyish hips. She lifted her face to the sun and let the wind ruffle her short curly hair.

  What time is it? she asked with her eyes closed and face uplifted, and Shasa who had followed her out leaned against the balcony rail and consulted his wristwatch.

  We should be crossing the Orange river in the next ten minutes, if the engine driver has kept us on schedule. I never feel as though we are home until I cross the Orange. Centaine went to lean beside him and slipped her arm through his.

  The Orange river drained the western watershed of the southern African continent, rising high in the snowy mountains of Basutoland and running down fourteen hundred miles through grassy veld and wild gorges, at some seasons a clear slow trickle and at other times a thunderous brown flood bringing down the rich chocolate silts so that some called it the Nile of the south. it was the boundary between the Cape of Good Hope and the former German colony of South West Africa.

  The locomotive whistled and the coupling jolted as the brakes squealed.

  We are slowing for the bridge. Shasa leaned out over the balcony, and Centaine bit back the caution that came automatically to her lips.

  Beg your pardon, you can't baby him forever, Missus, Jock Murphy had advised her. He's a man now, and a man's got to take his own chances., The tracks curved down towards the river, and they could see the Daimler riding on the flat bed behind the locomotive.

  It was a new vehicle; Centaine changed them every year.

  However, it also was yellow, as they all were, but with a black bonnet and black piping around the doors. The train journey to Windhoek saved them the onerous drive across the desert, but there was no line out to the mine.

  There it is! Shasa called. There is the bridge The steelwork seemed feathery and insubstantial as it crossed the half mile of riverbed, leapfrogging across its concrete buttresses. The regular beat of the bogey wheels over the cross ties altered as they ran out onto the span, and the steel girders beneath them rang like an orchestra.

  The river of diamonds, Centaine murmured as she leaned shoulder to shoulder with Shasa and peered down into the coffee-brown waters that swirled around the piers of the bridge beneath them.

  Where do the diamonds come from? Shasa asked. He knew the answer, of course, but he liked to hear her tell it to him.

  The river gathers them up, from every little pocket and crevice and pipe along its course. It picks up those that were flung into the air during the volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the continent's existence. For hundreds of millions of years it has been concentrating the diamonds and carrying them down towards the coast. She glanced sideways at him. And why aren't they worn away, like all the other pebbles? Because they are the hardest substance in nature. Nothing wears or scratches a diamond, he answered promptly.

  Nothing is harder or more beautiful, she agreed, and held up her right hand before his face so that the huge marquis cut diamond on her forefinger dazzled him. You will grow to love them. Everybody who works with them comes to love them. The river, he reminded her. He loved her voice. The husky trace of her accent intrigued him. Tell me about the river, he demanded, and listened avidly as she went on.

  Where the river runs into the sea, it has thrown its diamonds up on the beaches. Those beaches are so rich in diamonds that they are the forbidden area, the Spieregebied. Could you fill your pockets with diamonds, just pick them up like fallen fruit in the orchard? 'It's not as easy as that, she laughed. You could search for twenty years and not find a single stone, but if you knew where to look and had even the most primitive equipment and a great deal of luck- Why can't we go in there, Mater? Because, mon cheri, it is all taken. It belongs to a man named Oppenheimer, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, and his company called De Beers. One company owns it all. That's not fair! he protested, and Centaine was delighted to notice the acquisitive sparkle in his eyes for the first time. Without a healthy measure of avarice, he would not be capable of carrying through the plans she was so carefully laying for him. She had to teach him to be greedy, for wealth and for power.

  He owns the Orange river concessions, she nodded, and he owns the Kimberley and Wesselton and Bultfontein and all the other
great producing mines, but more, much

  more than that, he controls the sale of every single stone,

  even those produced by us, the few little independents. He controls us, he controls the H'ani? Shasa demanded indignantly, his smooth cheeks flushing.

  Centaine nodded. We have to offer every diamond we mine to his Central Saling Organization, and he will set a price upon it. And we have to accept his price? No, we don't! But we would be very unwise not to do so. What could he do to us if we refused? Shasa, I have told you often before. Don't fight with somebody stronger than yourself. There aren't many people stronger than us, not in Africa anyway, but Sir Ernest Oppenheimer is one of them. What could he do? Shasa persisted.

  He could eat us up, my darling, and nothing would give him greater pleasure. Each year we become richer and more attractive to him. He is the one man in the world that we have to be afraid of, especially if we were rash enough to come near this river of his. She swept a gesture across the wide river.

  Although it had been named Orange by its Dutch discoverers for the Stadtholders of the House of Orange, the name could have as readily applied to its startling orangecoloured sandbanks. The bright plumage of the waterfowl clustered upon them were like precious stones set in red gold.

  He owns the river? Shasa was surprised and perplexed.

  Not legally, but you approach it at your own peril for he protects it and the diamonds it contains with his jealous wrath. So there are diamonds here? Eagerly Shasa scanned the banks as though he expected to see them sparkling seductively in the sunlight.

  Dr Twenty-man-Jones and I both believe it, and we have isolated some very interesting areas. Two hundred miles upstream is a waterfall that the Bushmen called the Place of the Great Noise, Aughrabies. There the Orange thunders

  through a narrow rocky chute and falls into the deep, inaccessible gorge below. The gorge should be a treasurehouse of captured diamonds.

  Then there are other ancient alluvial beds where the river has changed its course. They left the river and its narrow strip of greenery and the loco accelerated again as they ran on northwards into the desert. Centaine watched Shasa's face carefully as she went on explaining and lecturing. She would never go on until she reached the point of boredom, at the first sign of inattention, she would stop. She did not have to press. There was all the time necessary for his education, but the one single most important consideration was never to tire him, never to outrun his immature strength or his undeveloped powers of concentration. She must retain his enthusiasm intact and never jade him. This time his interest persisted beyond its usual span, and she recognized it was time for another advance.

  It will have warmed up in the saloon. Let's go in. She led him to her desk. There are some things I want to show you. She opened the confidential summary of the annual financial reports of the Courtney Mining and Finance Company.

  This would be the difficult part, even for her the paperwork was deadly dull, and she saw him immediately daunted by the columns of figures. Mathematics was his only weak subject.

  You enjoy chess, don't you? Yes, he agreed cautiously.

  This is a game also, she assured him. But a thousand times more fascinating and rewarding, once you understand the rules. He cheered up visibly, games and rewards Shasa understood.

  Teach me the rules, he invited.

  Not all at one time. Bit by bit, until you know enough to start playing. It was evening before she saw the fatigue in the lines at the corners of his mouth and the white rims to his nostrils, but he was still frowning with concentration.

  That's enough for today. She closed the thick folder.

  What are the golden rules? You must always sell something for more than it cost you. She nodded encouragement.

  And you must buy when everybody else is selling, and you must sell when everybody else is buying. Good. She stood up. Now a breath of fresh air before we change for dinner. On the balcony of the coach she placed her arm around his shoulders, and she had to reach up to do so. When we get to the mine, I want you to work with Dr Twenty-man Jones in the mornings. You may have the afternoons free, but you'll work in the mornings. I want you to get to know the mine and all its workings. Of course, I will pay you., That isn't necessary, Mater. Another golden rule, my darling, never refuse a fair offer. Through the night and all the following day they ran on northwards across great spaces bleached by the sun, with blue mountains traced in darker blue against the desert horizons.

  We should get into Windhoek a little after sunset, Centaine explained. But I have arranged for the coach to be shunted on to a quiet spur and we will spend the night aboard and leave for the mine in the morning. Dr Twenty-man-Jones and Abraham Abrahams will be dining with us, so we will dress. In his shirtsleeves Shasa was standing in front of the long mirror in his compartment, struggling with his black bow tie, he had not yet entirely mastered the art of shaping the butterfly, when he felt the coach slowing and heard the loco blow a long eerie blast.

  He felt a prickle of excitement and turned to the open window. They were crossing the shoulder of hills above the town of Windhoek, and the street lights came on even as he watched. The town was the size of one of Cape Town's suburbs and only the few central streets were lit.

  The train slowed to a walking pace as they reached the outskirts of the town, and Shasa smelled wood-smoke. Then he noticed that there was some sort of encampment amongst the thorn trees beside the tracks. He leaned out of the window to see more clearly and stared at the clusters of dy shanties, wreathed in the blue smoke of campfires and shaded by the deepening dusk. There was a crudely lettered sign facing the tracks and Shasa read it with difficulty: Vaal Hartz? Hell No! It made no sense and he frowned as he noticed two figures standing near the sign, watching the passing train.

  The shorter of the two was a girl, barefoot and with a thin shapeless dress over her frail body. She did not interest him and he transferred his attention to the taller, more robust figure beside her.

  Immediately he straightened in shock and rising indignation. Even in the poor light, he recognized that silver-blond shock of hair and the black eyebrows. They stared at each other expressionlessly, the boy in the white dress shirt and black tie in the lighted window and the boy in dusty khaki. Then the train slid past and hid them from each other.

  Darling Shasa turned from the window to face his mother. She was wearing sapphires tonight and a blue dress as filmy and light as wood-smoke. You aren't ready yet. We'll be in the station in a minute - and what a mess you have made of your tie. Come here and let me do it for you. As she stood in front of him and shaped the bow with dextrous fingers, Shasa struggled to contain and suppress the anger and sense of inadequacy that a mere glimpse of the other boy had aroused in him.

  The driver of the locomotive shunted them off the main track on to a private spur beyond the sheds of the railway workshop and uncoupled them beside the concrete ramp where Abraham Abrahams Ford was already parked, and Abe scampered up on to the balcony the moment the coach came to a stop.

  Centaine, you are more beautiful than ever. He kissed her hand and then each of her cheeks. He was a little man, just Centaine's height, with a lively expression and quick, alert eyes. His ears were pricked up as though he were listening to a sound that nobody else could hear.

  His studs were diamond and onyx, which was flashy, and his dinner jacket was a little too extravagantly cut, but he was one of Centaine's favourite people. He had stood by her when her total wealth had amounted to something less than ten pounds. He had filed the claims for the H'ani Mine and since then conducted most of her legal business and many of her private affairs as well. He was an old and dear friend but, more important, he did not make mistakes in his work.

  He wouldn't have been here if he did.

  Dear Abe. She took both his hands and squeezed them.

  How is Rachel? Outstanding, he assured her. It was his favourite adiective. She sends her apologies, but the new baby Of course. Centaine nodded, understanding. A
braham knew her preferences for masculine company and seldom brought his wife with him, even when invited to do so.

  Centaine turned from her lawyer to the other tall stoop shouldered figure that was hovering at the gate of the balcony.

  Dr Twenty-man-jones. She held out her hands.

  Mrs Courtney, he murmured like an undertaker.

  Centaine put on her most radiant smile. It was her own little game, to see if she could inveigle him into the smallest display of pleasure. She lost again. His apparent gloom deepened until he looked like a bloodhound in mourning.

  Their relationship went back almost as far as Centaine's with Abraham. He had been a consulting mining engineer with the De Beers Diamond Company, but he had evaluated and opened the H'ani workings for her back in 1919. It had taken almost five years of her most winning persuasion before he had agreed to come to work for the H'ani Mine as Resident Engineer. He was probably the best diamond man in South Africa, which meant the best in the world.

  Centaine led the two of them into the saloon and waved the white-jacketed barman aside.

  Abraham, a glass of champagne? She poured the wine with her own hands. And Dr Twentyrnan-Jones, a little Madeira? You never forget, Mrs Courtney, he admitted miserably as she carried the glass to him. Between them it was always full titles and surnames, although their friendship had stood all the tests.

  I give you good health, gentlemen. Centaine saluted them, and when they had drunk she glanced across at the far door.

  On cue Shasa came through and Centaine watched critically as he shook hands with each of the men. He conducted himself with just the correct amount of deference for their age, showed no discomfort when Abraham over-effusively embraced him and then returned Twentyrnan-Jones's greeting with equal solemnity. She gave a small nod of approval and took her seat behind her desk. it was her sign that the niceties had been observed and they could get on to business.

  The two men quickly perched on the elegant but uncomfortable Art Deco chairs and leaned towards her attentively.