not covering the purchase orders with banker's guarantees. The stock brokers were buying for him simply on his name and reputation and position with CRC Manfred could not place too large a buying order with any one firm lest they ask him to provide surety. Doctor Manfred Steyner had no surety to offer.
So, instead, he placed moderate orders with dozens of different firms.
By three o'clock that afternoon Manfred had ordered the purchase of three quarters of a million rand's worth of shares. He had no means of paying for those shares but he knew he would never be called upon to do so.
When he sold them again in a few weeks' time they would have doubled in value.
A few minutes after his final conversation with the firm of Swerling and Wright in Cape Town, his secretary came through on the intercom.
'SAA have confirmed your reservation on the Boeing to Salisbury.
Flight 126 at nine a.m. tomorrow. You are booked to return to Johannesburg on the Rhodesian Airways Viking at 6 p.m. tomorrow evening.'
'Thank you.' Manfred grudged this wasted day but it was imperative that Theresa believed he had left for Europe. A She must see him depart on the SAA flight. 'Please get my wife on the phone for me.' 'Theresa,' he told her, 'something important has come up. I have to fly to London tomorrow morning. I am afraid I will be away over Christmas.' Her display of surprise and regret was unconvincing. She and Ironsides had made their own arrangements for the time he was away, Manfred was convinced of this.
It was all working out very well, he thought as he cradled the receiver, very well indeed.
The Daimler drew up under the portico of Jan Smuts Airport and the chauffeur opened the door for Terry and then for Manfred.
While the porter removed his luggage from the boot of the Daimler, Manfred swept the car park with a quick scrutiny. So early in the morning it was less than half filled.
There was a cream Volkswagen with a Kitchenerville number plate parked near the far end. All the line and senior members of the Sander Ditch had cream Volkswagens as their official vehicles.
'The bee has come to the honey pot thought Manfred, and smiled bleakly.
He took Terry's elbow into the main concourse of the airport.
Terry waited while Manfred went through his ticket and immigration formalities. On the outside she was a demure and dutiful wife, but she also had seen the Volkswagen and inside she was itching and bubbling with excitement.
Darting surreptitious glances from behind her sunglasses, looking for that tall broad- shouldered figure among the crowds.
It seemed a lifetime until she stood alone on the observation balcony with the wind whipping her piebald calfskin coat around her legs, and blowing her hair into a snapping, dancing tangle. The long shark-like shape of the Boeing jet crouched at the far end of the runway and as it started forward Terry turned from the balcony rail and ran back into the main building.
Rod was waiting for her just inside the doors, and he swung her off her feet.
'Gottcha!' With her feet dangling, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
The watchers paused and then smiled, and there was a minor traffic jam at the head of the stairs.
'Come on,' she entreated, 'let's not waste a minute of it.' He put her on her feet, and they ran down the staircase hand in hand. Terry paused only to dismiss the chauffeur, and then they ran through the car park like children let out of school, and clambered into the Volkswagen. Their luggage was on the back seat.
'Go, she said, 'go as fast as you can!' Twenty minutes later Rod pulled the Volkswagen to a tyre-squealing halt in front of the hangars at the private airfield.
The twin-engined Cessna stood on the tarmac. Both engines were ticking over in readiness, and the mechanic climbed down from the cockpit when he recognized Terry.
'Hello, Terry, right on time, he greeted her.
'Hello, Hank. You've got her warmed up already. You are a sweety!'
'Filed your flight plan also. Nothing too good for my most favourite customer.' The mechanic was a chunky grizzled little man, and he looked at Rod curiously.
'Give you a hand with the bags,' he said.
By the time they had the luggage stowed away in its compartment, Terry was in the cockpit speaking to the control tower.
Rod climbed up into the passenger seat beside her.
Terry switched off her radio and leaned over Rod's lap to speak to Hank.
'Thanks, Hank.' She paused delicately, and then went on with a rush.
'Hank, if anyone asks you, I was on my own today, okay?'
'Okay.' Hank grinned at her. 'Happy landings.' And he closed the cockpit door, and Terry taxied out onto the runway.
'Is this yours? Rod asked. It was a 100,000 rand's worth of aircraft.
'Pops gave it to me for my birthday,' Terry replied. 'Do you like it?'
'Not bad,' Rod admitted.
Terry turned upwind and applied the wheel brakes while she ran the engines up to peak revs, testing their response.
Suddenly Rod realized that he was in the hands of a woman pilot. He fell silent and his nerves began to tighten up.
'Let's go,' said Terry and kicked off the brakes. The Cessna surged forward, and Rod gripped the arm rests and froze with his gaze fixed dead ahead.
'Relax, Ironsides,' Terry advised him without taking her eyes off the runway, 'I've been flying since I was sixteen.' At 3,000 feet she levelled out and banked gently onto an eastern heading.
'Now that didn't hurt too much did it?' She smiled sideways at him.
'You are quite a girl,' he told her. 'You can do all sorts of tricks.'
'You just wait,' she warned him. 'You ain't seen nothing yet!' They flew in silence until the Highveld had fallen away behind them, and they were over the dense green mattress of the Bushveld.
'I'm going to divorce him.' She broke the silence, and Rod was not surprised that they were experiencing the mental telepathy of closely attuned minds. He had been thinking about her husband also.
'Good,' he said.
'You think I'd have a chance with you if I did?'
'If you played your cards right, you might get that lucky.' 'Conceited swine,' she said. 'I don't know why I love you.
'Do you? 'he asked.
'Yes.'
'And I you.' They relapsed into a contented silence, until Terry put the Cessna in a shallow dive.
'What's wrong?' Rod asked with alarm.
'Going down to have a look for game.' They flew low over thick olive-green bush broken by veils of golden brown grass.
'There,' said Rod, pointing ahead. A line of fat black bugs moving across one of the open places. 'Buffalo! 'And over there. 'Terry pointed left.
'Zebra and wildebeeste,' Rod identified them. 'And there is a giraffe.' Its long stalk of a neck stuck up like a periscope.
It broke into an awkward stiff-legged run as the aircraft roared overhead.
'We have arrived.' Terry indicated a pair of round granite koppies on the horizon ahead. They were as symmetrical as a young girl's breasts, and as they drew nearer Rod made out the thatched roof of a large building standing in the hollow between the koppies. Beyond it a long straight landing-strip had been cut from the trees, and the fat white sausage of a wind sock flew from its pole.
Terry throttled back and circled the homestead. On the lawns half a dozen tiny figures waved up at the Cessna, and as they watched, two of the figures climbed into a toy Land Rover and set off for the landing-strip. A ribbon of white dust blew out from behind it.
'That's Hans,' Terry explained. 'We can go down now.' She lined the Cessna up for its approach, and then let it sink down with the motors bumbling softly. The ground came up and jarred the undercarriage, then they were taxiing to meet the racing Land Rover.
The man who piled out of the Land Rover was white-haired, and sunburned like old leather.
'Mrs. Steyner!' He was making no attempt to conceal his pleasure.
'It's been much too long. Where have you been?' I've been busy, Hans.' 'New York? What the hell for?' said Hans surprisingly. This is Mr. Ironsides.' Terry introduced them. 'Rod, this is Hans Kruger.
'Van Breda?' asked Hans as they shook hands. 'You related to the van Bredas from Caledon?' 'I don't think so,' Rod muttered weakly and looked at Terry appealingly.
'He is stone deaf,' Terry explained. 'Both his ear drums blown out by a hang fire in the 1930s. He won't admit it though.'
'I'm glad to hear it,' Hans nodded, happily. 'You always were a healthy girl. I remember when you were a little piccaninny.'
'He is an absolute darling though, so is his wife. They look after the shooting lodge for Pops,' Terry told Rod.
'Good idea!' Hans agreed
