Daddy, Centaine has been seriously injured in a motorcar accident.
She is asking for you. Please come quickly.
Tara She tore the page out of the notebook and folded it. It was the one appeal to which she knew her father would respond and she wrote his name on the folded note.
Instead of going directly to the visitors' gallery, she hurried down the wide staircase into the lobby and ran to one of the uniformed parliamentary messengers who was standing outside the main doors to the chamber.
bYou have to get this message to Colonel Malcomess,' she told lien.
'I don't like to go in now, Dr Verwoerd is speaking,' the messenger demurred, but she thrust the note into his hand.
It's terribly urgent,' she pleaded and her distress was evident. 'His wife is dying. Please - please.' Tll do what I can.' The messenger accepted the note, and Tara ran back up the stairs. She showed her pass to the doorman at the entrance to the visitors' gallery and squeezed past him.
The gallery was crowded. Somebody had taken Tara's seat, but she edged forward and craned to look down into the chamber. Dr Verwoerd was on his feet, talking in Afrikaans. His silvery curls were neatly cropped and his eyes slitted with concentration as he used both hands to emphasize his words.
'The question that this person from Britain put to us was not addressed to the South African monarchists, nor was it addressed to the South African republicans. It was to all of us that he spoke.' Verwoerd paused. 'The question he asked was simply this. Does the white man survive in Africa or does he perish?' He had electrified the chamber. There was not a movement nor a shift of eyes from his face - until the uniformed parliamentary messenger slipped unobtrusively down the front row of opposition benches and stopped beside Blaine.
Even then he had to touch Blaine's shoulder to draw his attention, and Blaine accepted the note without seeming to realize what he was doing. He nodded at the messenger, and, with the folded scrap of paper unread in his fingers, once more focused all his attention on Verwoerd where he stood below the Speaker's throne.
'Read it, Daddy? Tara whispered aloud. 'Please read it.' In all that multitude Shasa was the only one who was not mesmerized by Verwoerd's oratory. His thoughts were a jumbled torrent, one racing after another, overtaking and mingling as they followed without logical sequence.
'Moses Gama.' It was scarcely believable that the memory had taken so long to return to him, even over the years and in spite o changes that time had wrought in both of them. They had once beer good friends, and the man had made a deep impression on Shasa a a formative period of his life.
Then again, Shasa had heard the name much more recently, it hoc been on the list of wanted revolutionaries during the 1952 troubles.
While the others, Mandela and Sobukwe and the rest, had stood trial, Moses Gama had disappeared, and the warrant for his arrest was outstanding. Moses Gama was still a criminal at large, and a dangerous revolutionary.
'Tara.t' His mind darted aside. She had selected Gama as her chauffeur and, given her political leanings, it was impossible that she didn't know who he was. Suddenly Shasa knew that Tara's meek repudiation of her previous left-wing companions and her new conciliatory behaviour had all been a sham. She had not changed at all. This man Moses Gama was more dangerous than all and any of her previous effete companions. Shasa had been hoodwinked. In fact she must have moved even further to the left, crossing the delicate line between legitimate political opposition and criminal involvement. Shasa almost rose to his feet, and then remembered where he was. Verwoerd was speaking already.
'The need to do justice to all, does not mean only that the black men must be nurtured and protected. It means justice and protection for the white men in Africa also --' Shasa glanced up at the visitors' gallery and there was a strangersitting in Tara's seat. Where was Tara? She must be in his office and the association of ideas led him on. -Moses Gama had been in his office. Shasa had seen him in the corridor and Tricia had told him, 'Only Mrs Courtney and her driver.' Moses Gama had been in his office and somebody had drilled the ceiling and laid electrical wires. It had not been Odendaal or Maintenance. It hadn't been anyone who had authority to do so.
'We are not newcomers to Africa. Our forefathers were here before the first black man,' Verwoerd was saying. 'Three hundred years ago, when our ancestors set out into the interior of this land, it was an empty wilderness. The black tribes were still far to the north, making their way slowly southwards. The land was empty and our forefathers claimed it and worked it. Later they built the cities and laid the railways and sank the mine-shafts. Alone, the black man was incapable of doing any of these things. Even more than the black tribes we are men of Africa and our right to be here is as Godgiven and inalienable as is theirs.' Shasa heard the words but made no sense of them - Moses Gama, probably with the help and connivance of Tara, had laid electrical wires in his office and - suddenly, he gasped aloud. The altar chest.
Tara had placed the chest in his office, like the Trojan horse.
Wild with anxiety now, he swivelled his whole body towards the visitors' gallery, and this time he saw Tara. She was squeezed against one wall and even at this distance Shasa could see that she was pale and distraught. She was watching someone or something on the opposition side of the chamber, and Shasa followed her gaze.
Blaine Malcomess was oblivious of all else as he followed the prime minister's speech. Shasa saw the messenger reach him and hand him the note.
Shasa looked back at the gallery and Tara was still concentrated on her father. After all the years Shasa could read her expression, and he had never seen her so worried and concerned, even when one of the children was gravely ill.
Then her face cleared with patent relief and Shasa glanced back at Blaine. He had unfolded the note and was reading it. Suddenly Blaine leapt to his feet and hurried towards the main doors.
Tara had summoned her father - that much was obvious. Shasa stared at her, trying to divine her purpose. Almost as though she sensed his gaze, Tara looked directly at him, and her relief crumbled into horror and wild guilt. She turned and fled from the visitors' gallery, pushing aside those who stood in her way.
A second longer Shasa stared after her. Tara had enticed her father out of the chamber, and her concern could only have been so intense had she believed he was in some kind of dire danger. This was followed by guilt and horror as she realized that Shasa was watching her. It was clear to Shasa then that something terrible was about to happen. Moses Gama and Tara - there was danger, mortal danger and Tara was trying to save her father. The danger was pressing and imminent - the wires in his office, the chest, Blaine and Tara and Moses Gama. He knew they were all interwoven and that he had little time in which to act.
