Rage by Wilbur Smith

and how many heavy decisions they had taken here.
    â€˜Do you remember Manfred De La Rey?’ he asked suddenly, but he was unprepared for her reaction. She started and looked down at him, colour draining from her cheeks, with an expression he could not fathom.
    â€˜Is something wrong, Mater?’ He began to rise, but she gestured at him to remain seated.
    â€˜Why do you ask about him?’ she demanded, but he did not reply directly.
    â€˜Isn’t it strange how our paths seem to cross with his family? Ever since his father rescued us, when I was an infant and we were castaways living with the Bushmen in the Kalahari.’
    â€˜We needn’t go over all that again,’ Centaine stopped him, and her tone was brusque. Shasa realized he had been tactless. Manfred’s father had robbed the H’ani Mine of almost a million pounds’ worth of diamonds, an act of vengeance for fancied wrongs that he had convinced himself Centaine had inflicted on him. For that crime he had served almost fifteen years of a life sentence for robbery, and he had been pardoned only when the Nationalist government had come to power in 1948. At the same time the Nationalists had pardoned many other Afrikaners serving sentences for treason and sabotage and armed robbery, convicted by the Smuts’ government when they had attempted to disrupt the country’s war effort against Nazi Germany. However, the stolen diamonds had never been recovered, and their loss had almost destroyed the fortune that Centaine Courtney had built up with so much labour, sacrifice and heartache.
    â€˜Why do you mention Manfred De La Rey?’ she repeated her question.
    â€˜I had an invitation from him to a meeting. A clandestine meeting – all very cloak and dagger.’

    â€˜Did you go?’
    He nodded slowly. ‘We met at a farm in the Free State, and there were two other cabinet ministers present.’
    â€˜Did you speak to Manfred alone?’ she asked, and the tone of the question, the fact that she used his Christian name, caught Shasa’s attention. Then he remembered the unexpected question that Manfred De La Rey had put to him.
    â€˜Has your mother ever spoken about me?’ he had asked, and faced by Centaine’s present reaction to his name, the question took on a new significance.
    â€˜Yes, Mater, I spoke to him alone.’
    â€˜Did he mention me?’ Centaine demanded, and Shasa gave a little chuckle of puzzlement.
    â€˜He asked the same question – whether you ever spoke about him. Why are the two of you so interested in each other?’
    Centaine’s expression turned bleak, and he saw her close her mind to him. It was a mystery he would not solve by pursuing it openly, he would have to stalk it.
    â€˜They made me a proposition.’ And he saw her interest reawaken.
    â€˜Manfred? A proposition? Tell me.’
    â€˜They want me to cross the floor.’
    She nodded slowly, showing little surprise and not immediately rejecting the idea. He knew that if Blaine were here it would have been different. Blaine’s sense of honour, his rigid principles, would have left no room for manoeuvre. Blaine was a Smuts man, heart and blood, and even though the old field-marshal had died of a broken heart soon after the Nationalists unseated him and took over the reins of power, still Blaine was for ever true to the old man’s memory.
    â€˜I can guess why they want you,’ Centaine said slowly. ‘They need a top financial brain, an organizer and a businessman. It’s the one thing they lack in their cabinet.’

    He nodded. She had seen it instantly, and his enormous respect for her was confirmed yet again.
    â€˜What price are they willing to pay?’ she demanded.
    â€˜A cabinet appointment – Minister of Mines and Industry.’
    He saw her eyes go out of focus, and cross in a myopic stare as she gazed out to sea. He knew what that expression meant. Centaine