Lanseria Airport and tell them to have the Lear ready and the pilots standing by.' He checked his watch. 'We can be in Cape Town before ten o'clock.' When they landed at Cape Town's D. F. Malan Airport, Klonkie the chauffeur was waiting for them. He drove them directly to Weltevreden.
Shasa and Centaine were waiting for them in the gun-room. By family tradition the gun-room was where the most dire and unpleasant subjects were addressed and thrashed out, both figuratively and literally. For it was here, across the big leather armchair, that Shasa had administered corporal punishment to his three sons. A summons to the gun-room was never taken lightly, and Isabella felt a prickle of apprehension as she and Garry entered.
Nana and Shasa stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the old desk, and their expressions were so bleak that Isabella stopped dead in her tracks and Garry bumped into her from behind. She hardly felt it.
'What is it?' she asked fearfully, and then she realized that Nanny was also in the room, standing in front of the stone fireplace. The old coloured woman had been weeping. Her face was swollen with grief, and her eyes were bloodshot. She clutched a sodden handkerchief in one hand.
'Oh, Miss. Bella,' she sobbed. 'I'm so sorry, child. I had to do it - for your sake...' 'What on earth are you talking about, Nanny?' Isabella started towards her, to comfort her - and then she stopped again.
A dreadful sense of disaster overwhelmed her as she realized what lay on the desk in front of Nana and Shasa.
'What have you done, Nanny?' she whispered, chilled and stricken with despair. 'You've destroyed us.' On the desk was her leather bound journal. Nanny had been into her safe.
'You have destroyed me and my baby. Oh, Nanny, how could you do this to us?' The journal was open at the page which contained the lock of Nicky's hair.
On the desk-top beside it lay his knitted baby bootee and the copy of his birth certificate.
'Oh, you stupid prying old woman.' Isabella's anger boiled over. 'You'll never know what harm you have done. You've killed my Nicky. I'll never forgive you for this, never.' Nanny wailed with despair, then covered her mouth with her wet handkerchief and fled from the room.
'She did it because she loves you, Bella,' Shasa told her sternly. 'She did what you should have done eight years ago.5 'It was none of her business. It's nothing to do with any of you. You don't understand. If you meddle with this, you will put Nicky and Ramsey in terrible danger.' She ran to the desk and snatched up the journal and clutched it to her chest. 'This is mine. You have no right to interfere.' 'What is happening here?' Garry stepped up beside Isabella. 'Come on, Bella. If you are in trouble, then it concerns all of us. We are a family.
We stand together.' 'Yes, Bella, Garry is right. We stand together.' 'If only you had come to us right away-'Centaine broke off, and sat down behind the desk. 'Recriminations will not help us now. We have to work this thing out - all of us together. Sit down, Bella. We can guess most of it.
You must tell us the rest of it. Tell us about Nicky and Ramsey, all of it.'
Isabella swayed on her feet, confused and torn by the torment of her emotions. Garry wrapped a thick muscular arm around her shoulders to steady her.
'It's OK, Bella. We are all here behind you now. Who is Nicky? Who is Ramsey?' 'Nicky is my son. Ramsey is his father,' she said softly, and buried her face against the great comforting barrel of his chest.
They let her cry for a while, and then Centaine lifted the telephone. 'I'll call Doc Saunders. He can give her a shot to calm her.' Isabella spun towards her. 'No, Nana. I don't need anything. I'll be all right. just give me a minute.' Centaine set the telephone back on its cradle, and Garry led Isabella to the buttoned-leather sofa and sat beside her. Shasa came to sit on her other side, and they held her between them.
'All right,' Centaine said at last. 'That's enough. You can weep later. Now we've got work to do.' Isabella straightened up, and Shasa handed her the handkerchief from his breast pocket.
'Tell us how it happened,' Centaine ordered.
Isabella took a deep breath. 'I met Ramsey at the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park when Daddy and I were living in London,' she whispered. Her voice strengthened as she went on. She spoke for almost half an hour. She told them why she and Ramsey had been unable to marry and how they had gone to Spain for Nicky's birth.
'I was going to bring him here to Weltevreden. Ramsey and I planned to be married here just as soon as he was free. ' She told them how Ramsey and Nicky had been abducted. She told them of the water torture of the infant she had been forced to witness and the nightmare of her existence since then.
'What did they want from you, these mysterious people? What price did you have to pay for Ramsey and Nicky's safety? What did you have to give them in exchange for the chance to visit Nicky? Shasa demanded harshly.
Centaine thumped her cane on the wooden floor.-'That is not important at the moment. We'll deal with that later.' 'No,' Isabella shook her head. 'I don't mind answering. They wanted nothing from me. I think that they were forcing Ramsey to perform some service for them. They rewarded him by allowing me to visit the two of them, Ramsey and Nicholas.' 'You are lying, Bella,' Shasa accused her harshly. 'Ramsey Machado is using you. You are being forced to work for him and his masters.' 'No.' She was appalled that he had seen through her lies so easily. 'Ramsey is as helpless as I am. We are being threatened and blackmailed-' 'Stop it, Bella,' Shasa cut her short. 'You are the one being forced to pay the price. Nicholas is the hostage. Ramsey is the evil puppet-master who pulls the strings.' She cried out with anguish: 'No! You are wrong! Ramsey is-' 'I'll tell you who Ramsey de Santiago y Machado is. Yes, you provided us with his family-tree and his full names and date of birth,' Shasa pointed out, and Isabella clutched the journal protectively. 'You know that I have friends in Israel. One of them is the director of Mossad. I telephoned him.
He ran Ramsey's name through their computer. They fink into the CIA computer. Our own security forces also have an open file on Ramsey de Santiago y Machado. In the three days since Nanny brought your journal to us, I have been able to discover quite a few interesting facts about your Ramsey.' He jumped up from the sofa and crossed to his desk. He pulled open one of the drawers and returned with a thick file which he slammed down on the coffee-table in front of her. Press cuttings and photographs and documents and reams of computer sheets spilled out from between the bulging covers.
'This came in last night in the Israeli diplomatic bag from Tel Aviv. I didn't call you until I had studied it. It makes interesting reading.' Shasa picked out a photograph from the pile. 'Fidel Castro's victorious entry into Havana in January 1959.
Those are Che Guevara and Ramsey together in the second jeep.' He flipped over another glossy black-and-white print. 'The Congo, 19e5. Patrice Lumumba Brigade. Ramsey is the second white from the left. The corpses are executed Simba rebels.' He picked out another. 'Ramsey with his cousin Fidel Castro after the Bay of Pigs.
Apparently, Ramsey was instrumental in gathering the advance intelligence of the landing.' He scuffled through the pack of photographs. 'This one is fairly recent. Colonel-General Ramsey de Santiago y Machado, head of the African section of the fourth directorate of the KGB, receiving the award of the Order of Lenin from General Secretary Brezhnev. Very handsome in his uniform, isn't he, Bella? Look at all those medals.' She cringed away from the photograph as though her father held a black mamba.
Garry leant across and took the photograph out of Shasa's hand. 'Is this Ramsey?' he demanded of her, holding it before her face. She dropped her eyes but would not answer.
'Come on, Bella. You must tell us. Is this your Ramsey)' Still she refused to reply. Shasa had to shock her into acceptance. 'It is all an elaborate deception. He probably singled you out as his victim. He almost certainly arranged the abduction and the water torture of your son.
He has been toying with you ever since then. Did you know that his nickname is El Zorro Dorado? It seems that Castro himself selected the name, the Golden Fox.' Isabella's head jerked up. She remembered the remark made by Jose, the paratrooper, that had puzzled her at the time. 'Pcle is the cub of the fox, El Zorro.' Somehow that was the last tiny detail that forced her to face the truth.
'El Zorro - yes.' Her expression hardened. The first gleam of burning hatred showed in her eyes. She looked instinctively towards her grandmother.
'What are we going to do, Nana?' she asked.
'Well, the first thing we are going to do is rescue Nicholas,' she said briskly.
'You don't know what you are saying, Nana,' Garry objected. His expression was stunned.
'I always know what I'm saying,' Centaine Courtneymalcomess told him firmly. 'I'm putting you in charge, Garry. This takes precedence over everything else. You can have whatever you need. I don't mind what it costs. just get me that child. That's all that counts. Do I make myself clear, young man?' Garry's bemused expression cleared slowly. He began to grin.
'Yes, Nana, you make yourself abundantly clear.'
Garry converted the gun-room at Weltevreden into his operations-room.
He could have chosen any of a dozen better-equipped facilities in one of the Courtney conference-centres or boardrooms. Somehow none of these had the secure family atmosphere of this room, which had for so long been the centre of their lives. None
