Sixteenth Chapter
Hate is not an emotion nearly as attractive as love (Oom Schalk Lourens said) but it can be quite as powerful.
After that fast downhill stretch, the train started losing speed as it entered the worst twists and turns of the mountain track snaking south. The train would continue to lose even more speed until it reached the town of Frere, now about an hour and fifty minutes away.
The train was so slow Johnny Zulu and Manny Porra didn’t have to hold onto anything, they simply sat on the roof of the conductor’s wagon and talked. Gerrit Johannes, talking with them, stood near the top of the roof ladder and held onto it, because he was the one who suspected he could slip and break his neck. Johnny Zulu had asked for this private indaba, Manny Porra seconded it, and Gerrit Johannes agreed because Bernardus van Aswegen’s silence made him uncomfortable and he had to get away from Emily Gibson’s dagger looks.
“Come on, you really don’t have to worry about it,” he insisted, “I’m not going to let her smuggle with my brain.”
Johnny Zulu snorted, Manny Porra spat into the wind. They were out of patience with Gerrit Johannes.
“Orright, orright, I slipped up,” he admitted, “but that’s over. She can stay on this train for all I care, we three are getting off at Frere with the stone -”
Johnny Zulu snorted again. “Ja-nee, sure, the bearded giant will just let it go.”
“Nee, man, don’t worry about Bernardus, he still believes it’s glass -”
“No, never!” Manny Porra shouted. “He just looks stupid, damn it! He knows!”
“He knows,” Johnny Zulu agreed grimly. “He’s too quiet, he’s waiting to cut your throat.”
Gerrit Johannes looked at them. He didn’t want to believe it, bliksem, but they were right. Bernardus van Aswegen knew his two Boer contacts were busy delivering a fake diamond to Louis Botha.
“Ja, orrright, he’s waiting to kill me,” he said wryly, “right behind Miss Emily. That little gun is hiding somewhere -”
“Inside her pants,” said Johnny Zulu.
“Keeping her honey pot warm,” said Manny Porra.
Gerrit Johannes attempted a smile. “You two have eyes in the back of your head.”
They didn’t smile back. Losing their cut of the diamond was not a joke. Gerrit Johannes gave up his smile, looked hard at them. They glared back without blinking, their eyes hard and cold. He knew what they were thinking.
If I don’t get them the money I promised them, they will use their short pick-axes to remove my head, heart and intestines. They will sell the magical part of me to their witch-doctor, the rest they will feed to the wild cats in their mountains.
“Fuck you,” he said and their hands immediately went to their pick-axes. “I have Thatcher’s FN pistol here in my pocket and it’s loaded,” he added and the two rogues tightened their grip on the axe handles. “You’ll get me, orright, I know, you’re quick with those axes. But I’ll get at least one of you, I’m not fucking dying alone, I swear it!”
Johnny Zulu was about to use his pick-axe, it showed in his eyes, but Manny Porra stopped him with a look.
“Gerrit, we don’t want to kill you,” Manny Porra said. “You are family.”
“Family won’t cheat us,” Johnny Zulu growled.
Gerrit Johannes tried to smile a real smile, it came out nervous. “I’m going to reach into my pocket but not for Thatcher’s gun, orright? You know I have the stone in this pocket.”
Manny Porra nodded. “Orright.”
Johnny Zulu remained silent, darkly watchful, gripping his axe handle.
Gerrit Johannes carefully brought out the Gibson diamond and showed it to them. The awesome stone caught and flashed back the sun and cloud shadow, the steep cliffs on both sides of the slowly moving train, all of it.
Gerrit Johannes said, “From now on one of you must carry it. You can take turns, I trust you.”
Manny Porra, stunned, opened his mouth but couldn’t get a word out.
Johnny Zulu’s sudden grin was like a sun breaking through darkness.
“Fuck you,” he said. “I’m not carrying a green mamba, that’s your job.”
Manny Porra giggled. “Ja-nee, too dangerous, Gerrit, it’s your job.”
Gerrit Johannes tried to speak, realised his mouth was dry and his throat constricted. He attempted a laugh but it came out a grunt, then he quickly slipped the great Gibson diamond back into his pocket.
Only now did he manage to speak. “I have to take a piss.”
The ghost of the curry and rice meal haunted the train conductor’s wagon. Bernardus van Aswegen opened a window wide.
Miss Emily said, “You do know they’re talking about us.”
He just looked at her.
“You know I’m not lying,” she said. “I took the real diamond from the chest. Gerrit Johannes never did the swap.”
Bernardus van Aswegen kept staring at her taut face. Not all that long ago, this woman must have cared for Gerrit Johannes or at least convinced herself she did. Right now her hatred for him almost heated the air around her.
“I know what you want, Gerrit told me,” she said. “You want the diamond to start a new republic, I want it to start a new life for my family. We can both get what you want, you know.”
“What the donner are you talking about?” he whispered furiously.
Captain Wellington, the town and district of Frere’s police chief, knelt behind a rock and watched the road from Winterton through his binoculars. His policemen were spread around behind other rocks, rifles aimed at the Winterton road, the barrels dusted to keep them from glinting in the hot sun. At a sign from Wellington they would open fire. To Kill. Surrender and get arrested were not what their captain wanted criminals to do, he wanted them to die. Not all the policemen agreed with this, many of them knew Peet Jansen as a fine road-builder and Knocky Koch as a decent undertaker, but the Union of South Africa was still raw and struggling, good jobs were scarce and they considered themselves fortunate to be wearing police uniforms.
So they silently watched the road in the blazing sun, rifles ready, as they waited for two horsemen to appear over the horizon.
With his commanding officer’s body stowed in the back of the army wagon, the last surviving sergeant presented Thatcher with the Webley revolver found on the lieutenant’s belt. Connelly’s own service revolver remained in its holster and would probably be buried with him.
“Lieutenant took it off the Boer stowaway,” the soldier explained.
“Thank you,” said Thatcher. “As so-called leader of this mission Captain Lawrence should be in charge of such matters. I’ll leave the sidearm with him.”
Thatcher had absolutely no intention of keeping the Webley. He wrongly believed he already had two sidearms himself, his police revolver on him and the FN hidden in his luggage. For all he cared one-eyed Lawrence could throw this tainted Webley out of his bloody compartment window.
He started towards the front of the train and the first-class compartment where, he also believed wrongly, the cowardly Lawrence was probably drinking and feeling sorry for himself. He hoped he would locate Detective Constable Blair on the way, they needed to talk rather urgently.
As he moved along the corridor from carriage to carriage, Thatcher stabbed a quick look into compartments he passed. You never know, Gerrit Johannes and Miss Emily might just be in one of them. But all he found was foul stares from passengers who did not appreciate him peeking into their temporary privacy.
When Thatcher reached the last first-class carriage and walked down the corridor, gripping the Gerrit Johannes revolver as if more than willing to fire it, his colleague Blair stumbled from the Lawrence compartment and shouted at him, “Put that away, damn it! No more shooting, enough, for God’s sake!”
Thatcher slid the revolver into his jacket pocket. “What happened?”
“Look for yourself,” snarled deadly pale Blair and stood aside.
Thatcher looked into the compartment and two things were immediately apparent: No attempt had been made to clean Connelly’s pool of blood off the floor, and Lawrence was neither drunk nor feeling sorry for himself. Not anymore, for sure. If that had been the case earlier, a bullet from his own sidearm had obviously ended all that. He was still holding the service revolver but no longer pointed it at his right temple, where the bullet had made an entrance hole not much larger than a ragged pucker, but on its vicious flight through the captain’s head the bullet had gathered so many chunks of brain, skull and blood the exit wound looked like the extremely messy and dripping mouth of a fucking train tunnel.
The suicide’s one good eye was staring at the ceiling of the compartment. Thatcher gently closed it with his thumb. At the end, as in his life, Captain Lawrence decided not to face harsh reality and took the cowardly way out again.
Wellington, angry with impatience now, tried to use an already dripping wet handkerchief to wipe the bloody sweat off his face. He was itching all over and really hated that.
“Where the hell are they?” he shouted, no longer caring how far his voice carried.
Peet Jansen and Knocky Koch should have been in the sights of his and his men’s rifles by now, even if they had travelled from Bergville and through Winterton by mule instead of fresh horses. What the blazes happened? Did someone alert them to the ambush waiting for them outside Frere?
“Guess what?” Wellington tended to scream like a girl when he was like this. “Someone fucking betrayed me!”
Grootjan and his son stepped from the train in Pretoria, their bags on their shoulders, and moved through the afternoon crowd feeling like foreigners. They had washed and changed into their best on the train, but they still didn’t fit in.
“I’ll find us a horse and buggy,” Kleinjan said.
“Why?” his father frowned. “Pretoria can’t be that big, let’s walk.”
“Pa, we are bringing Louis Botha the future of our volk,” Kleinjan frowned right back. “What will he think if we arrive sweating and covered with dust?”
“Find us a horse and buggy,” Grootjan said.