said, and handed over a sealed unaddressed envelope.
Isabella opened her handbag and secreted the envelope. The woman was staring straight ahead through the windscreen. She offered no word of farewell. Isabella stepped out of the Cortina and picked up her suitcase.
The driver slammed the door and drove away.
Standing on the pavement, in the midst of the throng of package-tour travellers, Isabella felt alone, more alone and frightened than she had been before she had seen Nicky and Ramsey again.
'I must trust him,' she repeated to herself as a litany of faith, and went to the Iberian check-in desk.
In the first-class lounge, she went to the women's washroom and locked herself in one of the cubicles. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet and tore open the envelope.
Red Rose, You will ascertain precisely what stage the development of a nuclear explosive device by Armscor and the nuclear research institute at Pelindaba has reached. You will report on the test site that has been selected and the date for the preliminary testing of the device.
On receipt of this data a further meeting with your son will be arranged.
The duration of this meeting will depend on the depth and scope of information that you deliver.
There was, as usual, no signature, and the message was typed on a sheet of plain paper. She stared at it sightlessly.
'Deeper and deeper,' she whispered. 'First the radar report.' That had not seemed so bad. Radar was a defensive weapon - but this? An atomic bomb?
Would there ever be an end to it?
She shook her head. 'I can't - I'll tell them, I can't.' Her father had never even hinted at any interest in the Pelindaba Institute. She had never seen any file or even a single letter that addressed the subject of a nuclear explosive device. She had read in the press that the research at Pelindaba was directed towards refinement and processing of the country's huge uranium production, and towards the development of a reactor for industrial and urban electrical power. The prime minister had given repeated assurances that South Africa was not developing the bomb.
Despite that, her instructions were not to ascertain if production were in progress. That was taken as a fact. She had been ordered to find out where and when the first device would be tested.
She began to shred the message between nervous fingers.
'I can't,' she whispered. She stood up and raised the toilet-seat. She dropped each tiny scrap of paper into the bowl separately, and then flushed them away.
'I'll tell them I can't.' But already her mind was busy.
I'll have to work on Pater, she thought, and immediately began to plan it.
Isabella had been out of the country on her visit to Spain for only five days. Nevertheless, Nana was angry, and sniffed at her weak excuse for leaving in the middle of her election campaign. The Friday before polling day, the prime minister, John Vorster, addressed a meeting in the Sea Point town hall in support of the National Party candidate.
It had taken all Centaine Courtney-Malcomess's wiles and wit to get him to cancel two other important engagements to make the speech. The party machine realized that Sea Point was a safe opposition seat and that they were simply going through the motions. They were reluctant to wheel out their big gun; but Centaine prevailed, as she usually did. With the promise of hearing the prime minister speak, the town hall was jam-packed. The meeting began with the usual heckling from the body of the hall, but it was fly good-natured.
Isabella spoke first. She kept it short, ten minutes. It was her best speech of the entire campaign. She had gathered valuable experience and confidence over the preceding weeks, and her jaunt to Spain seemed to have revitalized her. Both Nana and Shasa had gone over the text with her, and she had rehearsed her delivery in front of them. These two shrewd old political warhorses had given her valuable tips and suggestions.
Standing on the platform in front of the crowded hall, Isabella cut a slim determined figure, and the heart of the audience seemed to go out to her youth and loveliness. They gave her a standing ovation at the end, while John 27e Vorster stood beside her, red-faced and benign, nodding and clapping his approval.
The following Wednesday evening Shasa and Nana were standing on either side of Isabella, wearing huge party rosettes and straw boaters with the party colours, when the results of the polling were read out.
There were no upsets. The Progressive Party regained the seat, but Isabella had cut their majority to a mere twelve hundred votes. Her supporters chaired her shoulder-high from the hall as though she were the victor and not the vanquished.
A week later John Vorster invited her to a meeting in his office in the parliament building. Isabella knew the building intimately. When her father had been a cabinet minister in Hendrik Verwoerd's government, his office had been on the same floor only a few doors down the corridor from the prime minister's office.
During his tenure Shasa had given her the run of his office, and she had used it as a club whenever she was in central Cape Town. It brought back so many memories to walk once again down the wide corridor. As a teenager she had not in any way appreciated the aura of history with which the magnificent old building was imbued.
Now, with political aspirations thrust upon her against her will, she was entranced by portraits of great men, both good and evil, which decorated the panelled walls.
The prime minister kept her waiting only a few minutes. When she went through into his office he came round his desk to greet her.
'It's so good of you to want to see me, Oom John,' Isabella said in flawless Afrikaans. It was naughty of her to use such familiar address without being invited to do so. However, the term 'Oom', or 'Uncle', was one of great respect and the gamble paid off. Vorster's blue eyes twinkled in acknowledgement of her nerve.
'I wanted to congratulate you on your showing at Sea Point, Bella,' he replied, and she felt a thrill of acceptance. Use of her pet name was an unusual accolade.
'I'm having a coffee-break.' Vorster waved at the silver and porcelain service on a side-table. 'Will you pour a cup for both of us?
'Now, young lady,' he addressed her sternly over the rim of his cup. 'What are you going to do with yourself? Since you aren't going to be an MP.' 'Well, Oom John, I am working for my father-' 'Of course, I know that,' he interrupted her. 'But we can't let all that fresh young political talent go begging. Have you considered a seat in the Senate?' 'The Senate?' Isabella gulped, and the coffee scalded her tongue. 'No, Prime Minister, I haven't. Nobody ever suggested-' 'Well, somebody is suggesting it now. Old Kleinhans is retiring next month.
I have to nominate somebody to take his seat. It will do until we can find a safe seat in the lower house for you.' The Senate was the upper of the two legislative houses of the Republic of South Africa. Its duties were similar to those of the House of Lords, and it had the power to hold up dubious legislation and refer it back to the lower house. It had been considerably expanded back in the when the then prime minister, Malan, had set out to disfranchise those coloured voters who had the vote. He had packed the upper house with senators nominated by himself in order to force through the distasteful Act that stripped the coloureds of their vote. Some of the seats in the upper house were stiff in the prime minister's gift, and Vorstcr was offering her one of these.
Isabella set down her coffee-cup and stared speechlessly at him. Her mind was racing to keep up with this new development.
'Will you accept the nomination?' Vorster asked.
It was a marvelous short-cut, one that none of them -not Shasa nor even Nana - had dreamt of.
Hcndrik Vcrwocrd himself had started his political career in the Senate. At twenty-eight years of age, she would almost certainly be the youngest, brightest and certainly the most attractive senator in the upper house.
Appointments to various commissions and house committees would certainly follow her nomination. If she was only half as good as she knew she was, the National Party would turn her into their prime feminist political figure. Her entry to the innermost circles of power, to the innermost state secrets would come very swiftly.
'You do me great honour, Prime Minister.' Her voice was a whisper.
'I know that you will serve your country with even greater honour.' Vorster held out his hand. 'Congratulations, Senator.' As Isabella took his hand, she felt an icy finger of guilt trace down her spine, the chill of treason and treachery. She forced it back. The reaction followed swiftly - with a great surge of her spirits she realized that Red Rose was now invaluable to her masters. Soon she could set her own terms and demand her own rewards from them.
Nicky and Ramsey, she thought. Ramsey and Nicky - it will be soon now. Much sooner than we could ever have believed. We will be together again.
Isabella had come to love the austere grandeur of the Karoo.
Shasa had purchased the vast sheep-ranch while she was still a child. On her first visit she had hated the grim stony kopjes and forbidding plains that spread aimlessly to a distant horizon blurred by sun and dust until the juncture of earth and a milky luminous sky was obscured. Then as a teenager she had read Eve Palmer's The Plains
