Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗
'Five o'clock,' he said gently. 'No later, but I will be in my office all day right up to five, if anyone wanted to telephone me there." Shasa took his hand. 'I will never forget this." He glanced at his wristwatch as he turned away. It was a few minutes before noon, and most fortuitously he had a lunch date with Manfred De La Rey.
He headed back up Parliament Lane, and the noon-day gun fired just as he went in through the main doors. Everybody in the main lobby, including the ushers, instinctively checked their watches at the distant clap of cannon shot.
Shasa turned towards the members' dining-room, but he was far too early. Except for the white-uniformed waiters, it was deserted. In the members' bar he ordered a pink gin and waited impatiently, glancing every few seconds at his watch, but his appointment with Manfred was for twelve-thirty and it was no good going to search for him. He could be anywhere in the huge rambling building, so Shasa employed the time in cherishing and fanning his anger.
'The bastard!" he thought. 'I've allowed him to fool me all these years. All the signs were there, but I refused to accept them. He's dirty rotten, right to the core --' and then his indignation went off in , a new direction. 'Marge Weston is old enough to be his mother, how many of my other women has he been boffing? Is nothing sacred to the little devil?" Manfred De La Rey was a few minutes early. He came to the members' bar smiling and nodding and shaking hands, playing the genial politician, so that it took him a few minutes to cross the room.
Shasa could barely contain his impatience, but he didn't want anyone to suspect his agitation.
Manfred asked for a beer. Shasa had never seen him take hard spirit, and only after he had taken his first sip did Shasa tell him quietly, 'I'm in trouble - serious trouble." Manfred's easy smile never faltered, he was too shrewd to betray his emotions to a room full of adversaries and potential rivals, but his eyes went cold and pale as those of a basilisk.
'Not here,' he said, and led Shasa through to the men's room.
They stood shoulder to shoulder at the urinal and Shasa spoke softly but urgently, and when he finished, Manfred stood staring at the white ceramic through for only a few seconds before he roused himself.
'What is the number?" Shasa slipped him a card with Louis Nel's telephone number at CID headquarters.
'I'll have to use the security line from my office. Give me fifteen minutes. I will meet you back at the bar." Manfred zipped his fly closed and strode out of the lavatory.
He was back in the members' bar within ten minutes, by whic time Shasa was entertaining the four other members of the lunct eon party, all of them influential back-benchers. When the finished their drinks, Shasa suggested, 'Shall we go through?" A they moved towards the dining-room Manfred took his upper art in a firm grip, and leaned close to him, smiling as though conveying a pleasantry.
'I've squashed it, but he is to be out of the country within twenty four hours, and I don't want him back. Is that a bargain?" 'I am grateful,' Shasa nodded, and his anger at his son wa: compounded by this obligation that had been forced upon him. I was a debt that he would have to repay, with interest.
Sean's Harley was parked down at the sports hall that Shasa hoc built as a joint Christmas present for all three boys two years pre.
Obviously. It contained a gymnasium and squash court, half Olympic.
size indoor swimming-pool and change rooms. As Shasa approached.
he heard the explosive echo of the rubber ball from the courts and he went up to the spectators' gallery.
Sean was playing with one of his cronies. He wore white silk shorts but'his chest was bare. There was a white sweat band around his forehead, and white tennis shoes on his feet. His body glistened with sweat and was tanned to a golden brown. He was impossibly beautiful, like a romantic painting of himself, and he moved with the unforced grace of a hunting leopard, driving the tiny black ball against the high white wall with such deceptive power that it resounded like a fusillade of rifle fire as it rebounded. He saw Shasa in the gallery and flashed him a dazzle of even white teeth and green eyes, so that despite his anger, Shasa suffered a sudden pang at the idea of having to part from him.
In the change room Shasa dismissed his playing partner curtly: 'I want to speak to Sean - alone,' and as soon as he was gone he turned on his son. 'The police are on to you,' he said. 'They know all about you." He waited for a reaction, but he was disappointed.
Sean towelled his face and neck. 'Sorry, Pater, you've lost me there. What is it they know?" He was cool and debonair, and Shasa exploded.
'Don't play your games with me, young man. What they know can put you behind bars for ten years." Sean lowered the towel and stood up from the bench. He was serious at last. 'How did they find out?" 'Rufus Constantine." 'The little prick. I'll break his neck." He wasn't going to deny it and Shasa's last hope that he was innocent faded.
'I'll break any necks that have to be broken,' Shasa snapped.
'So what are we going to do?" Sean asked, and Shasa was taken aback by his casual assumption.
'We?" he asked. 'What makes you think that I'm going to save your thieving hide?" 'Family honour,' Sean was matter-of-fact. 'You'll never let me go to court. The family would be on trial with me - you would never allow that." 'That was part of your calculations?" Shasa asked, and when Sean shrugged, he added, 'You don't, understand the words honour or decency." 'Words,' Sean replied. 'Just words. I prefer actions." 'God, ! wish I could prove you wrong,' Shasa whispered. He was so furious now that he wanted the satisfaction of physical violence.
'I wish I could let you rot in some filthy cell." His fists were clenched, and before he thought about it, he shifted into balance for the first blow, and instantly Sean was on guard, his hands stiffening into blades crossed before his chest and his eyes were fierce. Shasa had paid hundreds of pounds for his training by the finest instructors in Africa, and all of them had at last admitted that Sean was a natural fighter and that the pupil in each case outstripped the master.
Delighted that Sean had at last found something that could hold his interest, Shasa had, before Sean began his articles, sent him to Japan for three months to study under a master of the martial arts.
Now as he confronted his son, Shasa was suddenly aware of every one of his forty-one years, and that Sean was a man in full physical flower, a trained fighter and an athlete in perfect condition. He realized that Sean could toy with him and humiliate him, he could even read in Sean's expression that he was eager to do so. Shasa stepped back and unclenched his fists.
'Pack your bags,' he said quietly. 'You are leaving and you are not coming back." They flew north in the Mosquito, landing only to refuel in .Johannesburg and then flying on to Messina on the border with Rhodesia. Shasa had a thirty percent shareholding in the copper mine at Messina, so when he radioed ahead there was a Ford pickup waiting for him at the airstrip.
Sean tossed his suitcase in the back of the truck and Shasa took the wheel. Shasa could have flown across the border to Salisbury or Lourenqo Marques, but he wanted the break to be clean and definite.
Sean crossing a border on foot would be symbolic and salutary. As he drove the last few miles through the dry hot bushveld to the bridge over the Limpopo river, Sean slumped down in the seat beside him, hands in his pockets and one foot up on the dashboard.
'I've been thinking,' he spoke in pleasant conversational tones.
