Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur. Страница 74

it took all Centaine's acting ability to shake hands in a friendly fashion, and then to joke lightly with the members of the press, even posing with Blaine for the photographs, and at no time to allow herself to moon at him. But afterwards as she drove herself back to the offices of the Courtney Mining and Finance Company, she had to pull off into a side road and sit quietly for a while to compose herself. There had been no opportunity for a single private exchange with Blaine.

Abe was waiting for her the moment she walked in through the front doors and he followed her up the stairs and into her office. 'Centaine, you are late. They have been waiting in the boardroom for almost an hour. I can't say with any great display of patience either. Let them wait! she told him with bravado she did not feel. 'They had better get accustomed to it., The bank was her single largest creditor.

The loss of the stones has frightened ten different shades of yellow out of them, Centaine. The bank directors had been demanding this meeting since the minute they heard she had arrived back in town.

Where is Dr Twenty-man-jones? He is in there with them, pouring oil on the troubled waters. Abe laid a thick folder in front of her. 'Here are the schedules of the interest repayments. She glanced at them. She already knew them by heart. She could recite dates and amounts and rates. She had already prepared her strategy in detail but it was all dreamy and unreal, like a children's game.

Anything new that I should know about before we go into the lions den? she asked.

A long cable from Lloyds of London. They have repudiated the claim. No armed escort. Centaine nodded. We expected that. Will we take them to court? What do you advise? I am taking silk's opinion on that, but my own feeling is that it will be a waste of time and money. Anything else? De Beers, he said. A message from Sir Ernest Oppenheimer himself. Sniffing around already, is he? She sighed, trying to make herself care, but she thought of Blaine instead.

She saw him bending over the wheelchair. She pushed the image from her mind and concentrated on what Abe was telling her.

Sir Ernest is coming up from Kimberley. He will be arriving in Windhoek on Thursday. By some lucky chance, she smiled cynically.

He requests a meeting at your earliest convenience. He has a nose like a hyena and the eyesight of a vulture, Centaine said. He can smell blood and pick out a dying animal from a hundred leagues. 'He is after the H'ani Mine, Centaine. He has been lusting after the H'ani for thirteen years. They are all after the H'ani, Abe. The bank, Sir Ernest, all the predators. By God, they'll have to fight me for it. They stood up and Abe asked, Are you ready? Centaine glanced at herself in the mirror over the mantel, touched her hair, wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, and suddenly it all clicked into crisp focus again. She was going into battle, her mind cleared, her wits sharp, she smiled a bright, confident, patronizing smile at herself.

She was ready again.

Let's go! she said, and as they marched into the long boardroom with its stinkwood table and the six huge magically lyrical Pierneef murals of the desert places decorating the walls, she lifted her chin and her eyes sparkled with assumed confidence.

Do forgive me, gentlemen, she cried lightly, attacking immediately with the fall force of her personality and sexual allure and watching them wilt before it, but I assure you that you now have me, and my full attention, for as long as you want me. Deep inside her there was still that empty aching place which Blaine had filled for a few fleeting moments, but it was buttressed and fortified, she was impregnable once again, and as she took the leather upholstered chair at the head of the table she recited silently to herself like a mantra: 'The H'ani belongs to me, no one shall take it from me. Manfred De La Rey moved as swiftly through the darkness as the two grown men who led him northwards. The humiliation and pain of his father's dismissal had invoked within him a new defiance and steely determination. His father had called him a blubbering ninny.

But I am a man now, he told himself, striding onwards after the dark figure of Swart Hendrick. I will never cry again. I am a man, and I will prove it every day I live. I will prove it to you, Pa. if you are watching over me still, you will never have to be ashamed of me again., Then he thought of his father alone and dying upon the hilltop, and his grief was overwhelming. Despite his resolution, his tears rose to swamp him and it took all his strength and his will to thrust them down.

I am a man now. He fixed his mind upon it, and indeed he stood as tall as a man, almost as tall as Hendrick, and his long legs thrust him forward tirelessly. I will make you proud of me, Papa. I swear it. I swear it before God. He neither slackened his pace nor uttered a single complaint throughout that long night, and the sun was clear of the treetops when they reached the river.

As soon as they had drunk Hendrick had them up again and moving northwards. They travelled in a series of loops, swinging away from the river during the day, hiding out in the dry mopani, and then turning back to slake their thirst and follow the riverbank all the hours of darkness.

it was twelve of these nights of hard marching before Hendrick judged them clear of any pursuit.

When will we cross the river, Hennie? Manfred asked.

Never, Swart Hendrick told him.

But it was my father's plan to cross to the Portuguese, to Alves De Santos the ivory trader, and then to travel to Luanda. That was your father's plan, Hendrick agreed. But your father is not with us. There is no place for a strange black man in the north. The Portuguese are even harder than the Germans or the English or the Boers. They will cheat us out of our diamonds, and beat us like dogs and send us to work on their labour gangs. No, Manie, we are going back, back to ovamboland and our brothers of the tribe, where everyone is a friend and we can live like men and not animals. The police will find us, Manie argued.

No man saw us. Your father made certain of that. But they know you were my father's friend. They will come for you. Hendrick grinned. In Ovamboland my name is not Hendrick, and a thousand witnesses will swear I was always in my kraal and knew no white robber.

To the white police all black men look the same, and I have a brother, a clever brother, who will know how and where to sell our diamonds for us. With these stones I can buy two hundred fine cattle and ten fat wives. No, Manie, we are going home. And what will happen to me, Hendrick? I cannot go with you to the kraals of the Ovambo. There is a place and a plan for you. Hendrick placed his arm around the white boy's shoulders, a paternal gesture.

Your father has entrusted you to me. You do not have to fear. I will see you safe before I leave you. When you go, Hendrick, I will be alone. I will have nothing. And the black man could not answer him. He dropped his arm and spoke brusquely. It is time to march again; a long, hard road lies ahead of us.

They left the river that night and turned back towards the south-west, skirting the terrible wastes of Bushmanland, keeping to the gentler, better watered lands, striking a more leisurely pace but still avoiding all habitation or human contact until, on the twentieth day after leaving Lothar De La Rey on his fatal hilltop, they followed a wooded ridge through well-pastured country and at last in the dusk looked down on a sprawling Ovambo village.

The conical huts of thatch were built in haphazard clusters of four or five, each surrounded by an enclosure of woven grass matting, and these were grouped around the big central cattle kraal with its palisade of poles set into the earth. The smell of wood-smoke drifted up to them on pale blue wisps, and it mingled with the arnmoniacal scent of cattle dung and the floury smell of maize cakes baking on the coals. The cries of children's laughter and the voices of the women were melodious as wild bird calls. They picked out the gaudy flashes of the skirts of bright trade cotton as the women came up in single file from the water-hole with brimming clay pots balanced gracefully upon their heads.