The Courtney Series - 05 - Power of the Sword by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 1785766864
Published: 2018-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

General James Barry Munnik Hertzog came out to Weltevreden in a closed car which bore no mark or insignia of his high office. He was an old comrade in arms of Jan Christian Smuts. Both of them had fought with great distinction against the British during the South African War, and they had both taken a part in the peace negotiations at Vereeniging that ended that conflict. After that they had served together on the national convention that led to the Union of South Africa, and they had both been in the first cabinet of Louis Botha’s government.

Since then their ways had diverged, Hertzog taking the narrow view with his ‘South Africa first’ doctrine while Jan Smuts was the international statesman who had masterminded the formation of the British Commonwealth and had taken a leading part in the birth of the League of Nations.

Hertzog was militantly Afrikaner, and had secured for Afrikaans equal rights with English as an official language. His ‘Two Streams’ policy opposed the absorption of his own Volk into a greater South Africa, and in 1931 he had forced Britain to recognize in the Statue of Westminster the equality of the dominions of the empire, including the right of secession from the Commonwealth.

Tall and austere in appearance, he cut a formidable figure as he strode into the library of Weltevreden which Centaine had placed indefinitely at their disposal, and Jan Smuts rose from his seat at the long green-baize-covered table and came to meet him.

‘So!’ Hertzog snorted as he shook hands. ‘We may not have as much time for discussion and manoeuvre as we had hoped.’

General Smuts glanced down the table at Blaine Malcomess and Deneys Reitz, his confidants and two of his nominees for the new cabinet, but none of them spoke while Hertzog and Nicolaas Havenga, the Nationalist minister of finance, settled themselves on the opposite side of the long table. At seventeen years of age Havenga had ridden with Hertzog on commando against the British, acting as his secretary, and since then they had been inseparable. Havenga had held his present cabinet rank since Hertzog’s Nationalists had come to power in 1924.

‘Are we safe here?’ he asked now, glancing suspiciously at the double brass-bound mahogany doors at the far end of the library and then sweeping his gaze around the shelves which rose to the ornately plastered ceiling and were filled with Centaine’s collection of books, all bound in Morocco leather and embossed with gold leaf.

‘Quite safe,’ Smuts assured him. ‘We may speak openly without the least fear of being overheard. I give you my personal assurance.’

Havenga looked at his master for further assurance and when the prime minister nodded he spoke with apparent reluctance.

‘Tielman Roos has resigned from the Appellate Division,’ he announced, and sat back in his seat. It was unnecessary for him to elaborate. Tielman Roos was one of the country’s best known and most colourful characters. ‘The Lion of the North’ was his nickname and he had been one of Hertzog’s most loyal supporters.

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