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231 pages

English

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Some fight for honour and glory, some for gold, some for land, faith, oil or power. But there are those who do battle for a different reason - blood feud and the colour of skin. This story is about them.

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Thriller

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Publié par	James H. Jackson
Date de parution	20 mars 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783010868
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0124€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE RACE
When Cold Hate Turns to Burning Rage
James H. Jackson
www.jamesjacksonbooks.com
Contents
START
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
FINISH
Copyright © James H. Jackson, 2013
First published in eBook format in 2013
The moral right of James H. Jackson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All characters in this work – other than obvious historical figures – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Epub ISBN 978-1-78301-086-8
eBook Conversion by eBookPartnership.com
Some fight for honour and glory, some for gold, some for land, faith, oil or power. But there are those who do battle for a different reason – blood feud and the colour of skin. This story is about them.
START
A beautiful day to die, a South African way to die. There was no hint in the spring flowers of the Northern Cape, in the sculpted borders to the flawless lawn, not a surface ripple on the filtered water of the dark-tiled pool, or a single hand-carved item of hardwood garden furniture out of place. Nothing irregular to catch the eye, to cause alarm. Calm prevailed – was guaranteed, paid for. Intrusion, unpleasantness, was for others; ugliness, politics, belonged elsewhere, beyond the electrified fences, the guards and the scanning cameras, belonged in townships, urban free-fire zones, in remote and unprotected farmsteads. Here, the salt encrusting the margarita glasses was just right, the bed linen was crisp, the staff as reliable as old friends. Here, carpets of daisies, irises, lilies and oxalis spread in profusion between the blossoms, sugar bushes and assegai trees. A natural order – how things should be.
Jonty Krige crushed the cube of ice between his teeth, let the flavoured meltwater trickle to the back of his throat, and stretched a foot up on the padded lounger. He loved the place, the childhood memories etched in its old oaks, in the balustrades and verandahs, in the kingfishers, coucals and bulbuls, in the blizzard of mauve flowers knocked from jacaranda trees after the rains. He would return whenever he could. It was rest, it was happiness, it was the family’s favourite residence. He did not visit enough. International travel, the self-imposed exile of a driven son employed by a driven father, holiday interests that took him skiing at Jackson Hole or polo-playing in Argentina, ensured that stopovers were brief. That would change. He took another long sip of the white rum. This was where he belonged: this was his country, his continent. This was his being. His family had lived, prospected, traded, fought, trail-blazed from the Atlantic to Indian Oceans for well over a century and had built an empire. He would inherit the business – the earth that was permeated with Krige blood, that was recirculated through generations of Krige veins and Krige souls. Africa suffused his DNA. His world, lying at his feet. He could master it – he had every confidence, his father had every confidence.
The laugh was familiar, joyful. He jumped up, delighted. Vicky was half-running from the house to greet him.
‘Hey, twin.’
‘Hi, sis.’
They hugged, the embrace of sibling equals, pulling apart to smile and assess. Both fit, tanned, good-looking, the blue eyes and blond-to-chestnut hair that could populate and decorate international weddings and semi-pro tennis tournaments, mingle at parties from Paris to the Upper East Side, or loaf on yachts from Cannes to Marina del Rey. Comfortable with anyone, comfortable with themselves, comfortable with each other. They were friends, confidants, natural allies, a mutual and enduring support system that had carried them from childhood to early adulthood, through pain and laughter, gain and loss, that had conquered the desolation left by the death of their mother and coped with the expectations of a loving and powerful father. Hands rested on shoulders, empathy and wordless understanding transmitted – always there .
‘So, how’s my little sister?’ he teased.
‘Holding her own against her big, patronizing brother,’ she retorted playfully.
‘You’re looking good.’
‘Compliments win loyalty points.’ She pinched his cheek. ‘And you’re still the handsome adolescent I saw last time.’
‘Shucks.’
‘On which subject – I’ve been hearing disturbing rumours of young Jonty Krige’s out-of-control libido.’
‘From which parts of the globe?’
‘All corners. It’s the glory of modern communications.’
His expression turned mock-sheepish. ‘Hey, Vicks. I’m in my mid-twenties, footloose, rich, talented. What can I say?’
‘Don’t. At least until I’ve had a drink.’ She broke away and found herself a chair. ‘Bernard’s bringing me a Pimm’s.’
‘How was Jo’burg?’
‘Still the ugliest city on earth. Our ancestors wouldn’t have left the Sterkfontein Caves if they’d known what was coming.’
‘No one could have predicted that scale of tackiness.’
‘Voortrekker meets modern Afristocracy – it’s a lethal combination.’ She turned to see if the drinks tray was following. ‘Still, I picked up some great secondhand books for Dad in Melville. And for you …’
‘A new mohair jacket?’
‘Well, you did ask for nothing larney.’
‘Tell me it’s a new mohair.’
She sighed. ‘All the way from Swaziland.’
‘ Yes. ’ A broad smile. ‘Thanks, sis. Really thoughtful.’
‘Never let it be said I don’t spoil my favourite and only brother. There’s also a pair of Zimbabwean buffalo-hide boots from Rosebank market for you to try on.’
‘I’ll wear them all to the next board meeting.’
‘Imagine Dad’s face. Next, you’ll be introducing bobotie and potjiekos to the canteen.’
In-jokes between a brother and sister who had charm, ease and education, who shared secrets and characteristics, enjoyed trust funds and opportunities, were blessed with the effortless class of their English mother and the dynamism and self-confidence of their South African father. Gilded youth had moved into their golden twenties – 24-carat privilege. A vividly coloured hoopoe strutted the lawn, scavenged clownishly for worms; a pair of brick-red laughing doves cooed contentedly from behind a screen of gum trees.
He kept his gaze on her, his antennae tuned for nuance, but would not let his aching concern show. Even twins had their camouflage, private and windowless aspects to their souls. She would accuse him of worrying too much, of being absurd, of seeing ghosts, and then she would move quickly to a fresh subject. But he did see ghosts, heard echoes of the young teenage girl who had visited a friend’s farm in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland in a previous decade – a previous lifetime – who returned without her childhood, with traumatized eyes, as the brutalized and raped victim of land-grab gangs answerable to yet another rapacious African despot. Gukurahundi – ‘the rains that wash the chaff away’. A neat catchphrase for the return of slaughter. And Vicky was so much chaff. She had been bound, gagged, forced to watch as the Ndebele-speaking staff were beheaded across a car bonnet by their drunk Shona-speaking attackers. Her hosts – friends of her parents – were shot. Then it was her turn. When they had finished, they covered her in Mukwa furniture oil and attempted to set her alight. They failed, left for other sport, new atrocity. No one did violence quite like the Africans.
She chatted happily, unaware of her brother’s thoughts, unburdened by recall, a young woman of extraordinary character. Her health, her strength, her striking looks, the warmth and vitality of a rounded soul, had escaped the past and drew on a boundless future – so different from the torn and bleeding bundle carried lifeless into a Bulawayo hospital, the wrecked and still body festooned in tubes and pumped with antibiotics and drug cocktails for anti-HIV. Rebirth. A miracle. It was their mother who never recovered, who with their father had sat at the bedside, grieved, tended, who within a year was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Her children and husband pulled together, pulled through. Political protection and Zimbabwean police ineptitude ensured that the farm assailants never faced trial. Yet it did not save them. Several leaders of hit squads allied to the then President Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party simply disappeared; the headless corpses of three officers from the ruler’s CIO secret police, responsible for coordinating much of the ‘cleansing’ of white-owned farms, were found crucified on a roadside leading to Harare. Few bothered to ask questions, none bothered to proffer answers – this was a dark continent, and there were no answers. Krige Snr had an appetite for vengeance.
And now Africa had come to South Africa. Jonty drained his rum, basked in the somnolent afternoon sunshine. They had survived, kept faith – when faith was merely wishful thinking, nostalgia, a denial of logic. A country and gun-culture of over sixty murders a day, of well over 50,000 reported rapes a year, a land from which some million whites had fled, in which several hundred police officers were killed annually, where Aids was epidemic, where the farms of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga burned. Azania – a post-apartheid nirvana, its prospects as bright as the orange over