thank you for what you did. You have always been so good to me.' 'Oh Mickey, Mickey!' Shasa cried, shaking his head sorrowfully.
'If only I could give you the experience I earned with so much pain.
If only you didn't have to make exactly the same mistakes I made at your age.' 'I am always grateful for your advice, Pater,' Michael tried to placate him.
'All right then, here's a piece for nothing,' Shasa told him. 'When you meet an invincible enemy you don't rush headlong at him, swinging with both fists. That way you merely get your head broken.
What you do is you sneak around behind him and kick him in the backside, then run like hell.' 'I'll remember that, sir,' Michael grinned, and Shasa put his arm around ,his shoulders. 'I know you smoke like a bush fire, but can I offer you a drink, my boy?' 'I'll have a beer, sir.' The next day Michael drove out to visit Solomon Nduli at Drake's Farm. He wanted to have his views on the 'Rage' article, and tell him of the consequences he had suffered at Marshall Square.
That was not necessary. Solomon Nduli somehow knew every detail of his detention and interrogation and Michael found he was a celebrity in the offices of Assegai magazine. Nearly every one of the black journalists and magazine staff wanted to shake his hand and congratulate him on the article.
As soon as they were alone in his office, Solomon told him excitedly, 'Nelson Mandela has read your piece and he wants to meet you.' 'But heis wanted by the police - he's on the run.' 'After what you wrote, he trusts you,' Solomon said, 'and so does Robert Sobukwe. He also wants to see you again.' Then he noticed Michael's expression, and the excitement went out of him as he asked quietly, 'Unless you think it's too dangerous for you.' Michael hesitated only a moment. 'No, of course not. I want to meet them both. Very much.' Solomon Nduli said nothing. He simply reached across the desk and clasped Michael's shoulder. It was strange what a pleasurable sensation that grip gave Michael, the first comradely gesture he had ever received from a black man.
Shasa banked the HS 125 twin-engined jet to give himself a better view of the Silver River Mine a thousand feet below.
The headgear was of modern design, not the traditional scaffolding of steel girders with the great steel wheels of the haulage exposed. It was instead a graceful unbroken tower of concrete, tall as a tenstorey building, and around it the other buildings of the mine complex, the crushing works and uranium extraction plant and the gold refinery, had been laid out with equal aesthetic consideration.
The administration block was surrounded by green lawns and flowering gardens, and beyond that there were an eighteen-hole golf course, a cricket pitch and a rugby field for the white miners. An Olympic-size swimming-pool adjoined the mine club and single quarters. On the opposite side of the property stood the compound for the black mineworkers. Here again Shasa had ordered that the traditional rows of barracks be replaced by neat cottages for the senior black staff and the bachelor quarters were spacious and pleasant, more like motels than institutions to house and feed the five thousand tribesmen who had been recruited from as far afield as Nyasaland in the north and Portuguese Mozambique in the east. There were also soccer fields and cinemas and a shopping complex for the black employees, and between the buildings were green lawns and trees.
The Silver River was a wet mine and each day millions of gallons of water were pumped out of the deep workings and these were used to beautify the property. Shasa had reason to be proud.
Although the main shaft had intersected the gold-bearing reef at great depth - more than a mile below the surface - still the ore was so rich that it could be brought to the surface for enormous profit.
What's more, the price could not be pegged at $35 per ounce for much longer. Shasa was convinced that it would double and even treble.
'Our guardian angel,' Shasa smiled to himself as he levelled the wings of the HS 125, and began his preparations for the landing.
'Of all the blessings that have been heaped upon this land, gold is the greatest. It has stood us through the bad times, and made the good times glorious. It is our treasure and more, for when all else fails, when our enemies and the fates conspire to bring us down, gold glows with its bright particular lustre to protect us. A guardian angel indeed.' Although the company pilot in the right-hand seat watched critically, for Shasa had only converted to jets within the last twelve months, Shasa brought the swift machine in to the long blue tarmac strip with casual ease. The HS 125 was painted in silver and blue with the stylized diamond logo on the fuselage, just as the old Mosquito had been. It was a magnificent machine. With its seating for eight passengers and its blazing speed, it was infinitely more practical than the Mosquito, but Shasa still occasionally mourned her loss. He had flown over five thousand hours in the old Mosquito before at last donating her to the airforce museum, where, restored to her combat camouflage and armaments, she was one of the prime exhibits.
Shasa rolled the glistening new jet down to the hangar at the far end of the strip, and reception committee was out to meet him headed by the general manager of the Silver River, all of them holding their ears against the shrill wall of the engines.
The general manager shook Shasa's hand and said immediately, 'Your son asked me to apologize that he wasn't able to meet you, Mr Courtney.
He is underground at the moment, but asked me to tell you he will come up to the guest house as soon as he gets off shift.' The general manager, emboldened by Shasa's smile of paternal approval, risked a pleasantry. 'It must run in the family, but it's difficult to get the little blighter to stop working, we almost have to tie him down.' There were two guest houses, one for other important visitors to the mine, and this one set aside exclusively for Shasa and Centaine.
It was so sybaritic and had cost so much that embarrassing questions had been put to Shasa at the annual general meeting of the company by a group of dissident shareholders. Shasa was totally unrepentant. 'How can I work properly if I'm not allowed at least some basic comforts? A roof over my head - is that too much to ask?' The guest house had its own squash court and heated indoor pool, cinema, conference room, kitchens and wine cellar. The design was by one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most brilliant pupils and Hicks had come out from London to do the interior. It housed the overflow of Shasa's art collection and Persian carpets from Weltevreden, and the mature trees in the landscaped garden had been selected from all over the country to be replanted'here. Shasa felt very much at home in this little pied-a-terre.
The underground engineer and the chief electrical engineer were already waiting in the conference room and Shasa went straight in and was at work within ten minutes of landing the jet. By eight o'clock that evening he had exhausted his engineers and he let them go. Garry was waiting next door in Shasa's private study, filling in the time playing with the computer terminal, but he leapt up as Shasa u walked in.
'Dad, I'm so glad I've found you. I've been trying to catch up with you for days - I'm running out of time.' He was stuttering again.
