Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (электронная книга TXT) 📗
He left the Mauser under the seat of the Morris. Both the weapon and the vehicle would be taken care of. He crossed quickly to the back door of the restroom and they were waiting for him inside.
Roelf leapt to his feet anxiously as he saw the blood on the blue overalls.
you all right? What happened? Smuts is dead, Manfred said, and his savage joy was transmitted to them. They did not cheer or speak, but stood quietly, savouring the moment on which history would hinge.
Roelf broke the silence after a few seconds. You are hurt. While one of the stormjagers went out and drove the
Morris away, Roelf helped Manfred strip off his soiled overalls.
There was very little blood now, but the flesh around the wound was swollen and bruised. The bullet-hole itself was a black puncture that wept watery pink lymph. Roelf dressed and bound it up with bandages from a railway firstaid kit.
Because Manfred had very little use of his left arm, Roelf lathered the black beard and shaved it off with a straight razor for him. With the beard gone Manfred was years younger, handsome and clean-cut once again, but pale from loss of blood and the weakness of his wound. They helped him into a clean pair of overalls and Roelf set the fireman's cap on his head.
We will meet again soon, Roelf told him. And I am proud to be your friend. From now on glory will follow you all the days of your life. The engine driver came forward. We must go, he said.
Roelf and Manfred shook hands and then Manfred turned away and followed the driver out of the restroom and down the platform to the waiting locomotive.
The police stopped the northbound goods train at Worcester Station. They opened and searched all the trucks and a constable climbed into the cab of the locomotive and searched that also.
What is the trouble? the engine driver demanded.
There has been a murder. Some bigwig was shot on Table Mountain this morning. We've got a description of the killer.
There are police roadblocks on all the roads and we are searching every motor vehicle and ship and train. Who was killed? Manfred asked, and the constable shrugged.
I don't know, my friend, but judging by the fuss it's somebody important. He climbed down from the cab, and a few minutes later the signals changed to green and they rolled out of the station heading north.
By the time they reached Bloemfontein, Manfred's shoulder had swollen into a hard purple hump and the pain was insupportable. He sat hunched in a corner of the cab, moamng softly, teetering on the brink of consciousness, the rustle of dark wings filling his head.
Roelf had telephoned ahead, and there were friends to meet him and smuggle him out of the Bloemfontein railway yards.
Where are we going? A doctor, they told him, and reality broke up into a patchwork of darkness and pain.
He was aware of the choking reek of chloroform, and when he woke he was in a bed in a sunny but monastically furnished room. The shoulder was bound up in crisp white bandages, and despite the lingering nausea of the anaesthetic, he felt whole again.
There was a man sitting in the chair beside the window, and as soon as he realized Manfred was awake, he came to him.
How do you feel? Not too bad. Has it happened, the rising? Have our people seized power? The man looked at him strangely. You do not know? he asked.
I only know that we have succeeded,, Manfred began, but the man fetched a newspaper and laid it on the bed. He stood beside Manfred as he read the headlines:
ASSASSINATION ON TABLE MOUNTAIN
OB BLAMED FOR KILLING OF PROMINENT HISTORIAN
SMUTS ORDERS ARREST AND INTERNMENT OF 600
Manfred stared uncomprehendingly at the news-sheet, and the man told him, You killed the wrong man. Smuts has the excuse he wanted. All our leaders have been seized, and they are searching for you. There is a man-hunt across the land.
You cannot stay here. We expect the police to be here at any minute. Manfred was passed on and he left the city riding in the back of a truck under a load of stinking dry hides. The Ossewa Brandwag had been decimated by the arrests, and those members remaining at liberty were shaken and afraid, all of them running for cover. None of them wanted to take the risk of harbouring the fugitive. He was passed on again and again.
The plan had seen no further ahead than the assassination and successful revolt, after which Manfred would have emerged as a Volk hero and taken his rightful place in the councils of the republican government. Now it was run and hide, sick and weak, a price of five thousand pounds on his head. Nobody wanted him; he was a dangerous risk and they passed him on as quickly as they could find someone else to take him.
in the published lists of those arrested and interned in the government crackdown, he found many names he knew, and with dismay he read Roeffs name, and that of the Reverend Tromp Bierman amongst them. He wondered how Sarah, Aunt Trudi and the girls would fare now, but he found it difficult to think or concentrate, for despair had unmanned him, and he knew the terror of a hunted and wounded animal.
it took eight days to make the journey to Johannesburg.
He had not deliberately set out for the Witwatersrand, but circumstances and the whim of his helpers led him that way. By rail and truck and, later, when the wound began to heal and his strength returned, at night and on foot across the open veld, he at last reached the city.
He had an address, his last contact with the brotherhood and he took the tramcar from the main railway station along the Braamfontein ridge and watched the street numbers as they passed.
The number he needed was 36. It was one in a row of semi-detached cottages, and he started to rise to leave the tramcar at the next stop.
Then he saw the blue police uniform in the doorway of number 36 and he sank down in his seat again and rode the tramcar to its terminus.
He left it there and went into a Greek cafe across the road.
He ordered a cup of coffee, paying for it with his last few coins, and sipped it slowly, hunched over the cup, trying to think.
He had avoided a dozen police roadblocks and searches in these last eight days, but he sensed that he had exhausted his luck. There was no hiding-place open to him any longer.
The road led from here on to the gallows.
He stared out of the greasy plate-glass window of the cafe
and the street sign across the road caught his eye. Something stirred in his memory, but it eluded his first efforts to grasp it. Then suddenly he felt the lift of his spirits and another weak glimmer of hope.
He left the cafe and followed the road whose name he had recognized. The area deteriorated quickly into a slum of shanties and hovels and he saw no more white faces on the rutted unmade street. The black faces at the windows or in the reeking alleyways watched him impassively across that unfathomable void which separates the races in Africa.
He found what he was looking for. It was a small general dealer's store crowded with black shoppers, noisy and laughing, the women with their babies strapped upon their backs, bargaining across the counter for sugar and soap, paraffin and salt, but the hubbub descended into silence when a white man entered the shop, and they gave way for him respectfully, not looking directly at him.
The proprietor was an elderly Zulu with a fluffy beard of white wool, dressed in a baggy Western-style suit. He left the black woman he was serving and came to Manfred, inclining his head deferentially to listen to Manfred's request.
Come with me, Nkosi. He led Manfred through to the storeroom at the back of the shop.
You will have to wait, he said, perhaps a long time, and he left him there.
Manfred slumped down on a pile of sugar sacks. He was hungry and exhausted and the shoulder was starting to throb again. He fell asleep and was roused by a hand on his shoulder and a deep voice in his ear.
