Rage by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

their heads, he grinned. David was reminded strongly of the movie he and Matty had taken the children to see the previous Saturday afternoon,
The Sea Hawk , though the eye-patch made Shasa look even more piratical than Errol Flynn had done in the title role.
    â€˜The founder of our company, Mme Centaine de Thiry Courtney-Malcomess, has never approved of the consumption of alcohol in the boardroom. However—’ Still grinning, Shasa nodded at David, who went to open the main doors of the boardroom and a secretary wheeled in a trolley on which the rows of glasses clinked and the green bottles of Dom Perignon swished in their silver ice-buckets. ‘Old customs give way to new,’ Shasa said, and drew the first cork with a discreet pop.

S hasa throttled back the Rolls-Royce engines and the Mosquito sank down through the ribbons of scattered cirrus cloud, and the endless golden plains of the high African shield came up to meet her. Off to the west Shasa could just make out the clustered buildings of the mining town of Welkom, centre of the Orange Free State goldfields. Founded only a few years previously, when the vast Anglo-American Corporation began opening up these fields, it was already a model town of over a hundred thousand persons.
    Shasa unclipped his oxygen mask and let it dangle on his chest as he leaned forward on his straps and peered ahead through the windshield ahead of the Mosquito’s blue nose.
    He picked out the tiny steel tower of the drilling rig almost lost in the immensity of the dusty plain, and using it as a landmark traced the gossamer thread of fences that enclosed the Silver River farms — eleven thousand acres, most of it bare and undeveloped. It was amazing that the geologists of the big mining houses had overlooked this little pocket, but then nobody could have reasonably
expected the gold reef to spur off like that – that is, nobody but Twentyman-Jones and Shasa Courtney.
    Yet the reef was as far beneath the earth as the Mosquito now circled above it. It seemed impossible that any human endeavour would be able to burrow down that deep, but already Shasa could see in his imagination the tall headgear of the Silver River main towering two hundred feet above the bleak plain, with its shaft stabbing down a mile and more into the underground river of precious metal.
    â€˜And the Yanks can’t hold out for ever — they will have to let gold go free,’ he told himself.
    He stood the Mosquito on one wing and on the instrument panel the gyrocompass revolved smoothly. Shasa lifted the wing and she was precisely on her new heading of 125°.
    â€˜Fifteen minutes, with these winds,’ he grunted, as he marked the large-scale map on his knee, and the fine exaltation of spirit stayed with him for the remainder of the flight until he saw the dark pencil-line of smoke rising into the still air dead ahead. They had put up a smoke beacon to guide him in.
    There was a Dakota parked in front of the lonely galvanized iron-clad hangar at the end of the strip. The big aircraft had Air Force markings. The runway was of rolled yellow clay, hard and smooth and the Mosquito settled to it with barely a jolt. It had taken endless practice to develop that sort of distance judgement after he had lost the eye.
    Shasa slid back the canopy and taxied towards the hangar. There was a green Ford pick-up near the mast of the windsock, and a lone figure dressed in khaki shorts and shirt stood beside the smoke pot, fists clenched on his hips, watching Shasa taxi up and cut the engines. Then as Shasa jumped down, he stepped forward and offered his right hand, but his expression, solemn and reserved, was at odds with the welcoming gesture.

    â€˜Good afternoon, Minister.’ Shasa was as unsmiling and their grip was hard but brief. Then as Shasa looked deeply into Manfred De La Rey’s pale eyes, he had a strange feeling of déjà vu, of having stared into those same eyes in desperate