Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 6

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needle-nosed interceptors stood, even in repose their forward lines

giving them speed and thrust.

David paused to pat the cold metal of one of them, and the orderly found

him there peering up at the emblem of the Flying Cobra upon the towering

tail plane.

C.  O.  's compliments, sir, and will you report to him right away.

Colonel Rastus Naude was a dried-out stick of a man, with a wizened

monkey face, who wore his uniform and medal ribbons with a casually

distracted air.

He had flown Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain, Mustangs in Italy,

Spitfires and Messerschmitt log's in Palestine and Sabres in Korea, and

he was too old for his present command, but nobody could muster the

courage to tell him that, especially as he could out-fly and out-gun

most of the young bucks on the squadron.

So we are getting rid of you at last, Morgan, he greeted David.  Not

until after the mess party, sir.  Ja, Rastus nodded.  You've given me

enough hardship these last five years.  You owe me a bucket of whisky.

He gestured to the hard-backed chair beside his desk.  Sit down, David.

It was the first time he had used David's given name, and David placed

his flying helmet on the corner of the desk and lowered himself into the

chair, clumsy in the constricting grip of his G-suit.

Rastus took his time filling his pipe with the evil black Magaliesberg

shag and he studied the young man opposite him intently.  He recognized

the same qualities in him that Paul Morgan had prized, the aggressive

and competitive drive that gave him a unique value as an interceptor

pilot.

He lit the pipe at last, puffing thick rank clouds of blue smoke as he

slid a sheath of documents across the desk to David.

Read and sign, he said.  That's an order.  David glanced rapidly through

the papers, then he looked up and grinned.

You don't give in easily, sir, he admitted.

One document was a renewal of his short service contract for an

additional five years, the other was a warrant of promotion, from

captain to major.

We have spent a great deal of time and money in making you what you are.

You have been given an exceptional talent, and we have developed it

until now you are, I'll not mince words, one hell of a pilot I'm sorry,

sir, David told him sincerely.

Damn it, said Rastus angrily.  Why the hell did you have to be born a

Morgan.  All that money, they'll clip your wings, and chain you to a

desk.  It's not the money.  David denied it swiftly.  He felt his own

anger stir at the accusation.

Rastus nodded cynically.  Ja!  he said.  I hate the stuff also.  He

picked up the documents David had rejected, and grunted.  Not enough to

tempt you, hey?

Colonel, it's hard to explain.  I just feel that there is more to do,

something important that I have to find out about, and it's not here.  I

have to go look for it.  Rastus nodded heavily.  All right then, he

said.  I had a good try.  Now you can take your long-suffering

commanding officer down to the mess and spend some of the Morgan

millions on filling him up with whisky He stood up and clapped his

uniform cap at a rakish angle over his cropped grey head.  You and I

will get drunk together this night, for both of us are losing something&

I perhaps more than you.

It seemed that David had inherited his love of beautiful and powerful

machines from his father.  Clive Morgan had driven himself, his wife,

and his brand new Ferrari sports car into the side of a moving goods

train at an unlit level crossing.  The traffic police estimated that the

Ferrari was travelling at one hundred and fifty miles an hour at the

moment of impact.

Clive Morgan's provision for his eleven-year-old son was detailed and

elaborate.  The child became a ward of his uncle Paul Morgan, and his

inheritance was arranged in a series of trust funds.

On his majority he was given access to the first of the funds which

provided an income equivalent to that of, say, a highly successful

surgeon.  On that day the old green M.  G.  had given way to a

powder-blue Maserati, in true Morgan tradition.

On his twenty-third birthday, control of the sheep ranches in the

Karroo, the cattle ranch in South West Africa and Jabulani, the

sprawling game ranch in the Sabi-Sand block, passed to him, their

management handled smoothly by his trustees.

On his twenty-fifth birthday the number two fund interest would divert

to him, in addition to a large block of negotiable paper and title in

two massive urban holdings, office and supermarket complexes, and a

highrise housing project.

At age thirty the next fund opened for him, as large as the previous two

combined, and transfer to him for the first of five blocks of Morgan

stock would begin.

From then onwards, every five years until age fifty further funds

opened, further blocks of Morgan stock would be transferred.  It was a

numbing procession of wealth that stretched ahead of him, daunting in

its sheer magnitude; like a display of too much rich food, it seemed to

depress appetite.

David drove fast southwards, with the Michelin metallics hissing

savagely on the tarmac, and he thought about all that wealth, the great

golden cage, the insatiable maw of Morgan Group yawning open to swallow

him so that, like the cell of a jelly fish, he would become a part of

the whole, a prisoner of his own abundance.

The prospect appalled him, adding a hollow sensation in his belly to the

pulse of pain that beat steadily behind his eyes, testimony to the

foolhardiness of trying, to drink level with Colonel Rastus Naude.

He pushed the Maserati harder, seeking the twin opiates of power and

speed, finding comfort and escape in the rhythms and precision of

driving very fast, and the hours flew past as swiftly as the miles so it

was still daylight when he let himself into Mitzi's apartment on the

cliffs that overlooked Clifton beach and the clear green Atlantic.

Mitzi's apartment was chaos, that much had not changed.  She kept open

house for a string of transitory guests who drank her liquor, ate her

food and vied with each other as to who could create the most

spectacular shambles.

In the first bedroom that David tried there was a strange girl with dark

hair curled on the bed in boys pyjamas, sucking her thumb in sleep.

With the second room he was luckier, and he found it deserted, although

the bed was unmade and someone had left breakfast dishes smeared with

congealed egg upon the side table.

David slung his bag on the bed and fished out his bathing costume.  He

changed quickly and went out by the side stairs that spiralled down to

the beach and began to run, a trot at first, and then suddenly he

sprinted away, racing blindly as though from some terrible monster that

pursued him.  At the end of Fourth beach where the rocks began, he

plunged into the icy surf and swam out to the edge of the kelp at

Bakoven point, driving overarm through the water and the cold lanced him

to the bone, so that when he came out he was blue and shuddering.  But

the hunted feeling was gone and he warmed a little as he jogged back to

Mitzi's apartment.

He had to remove the forest of pantihose and feminine underwear that

festooned the bathroom before he could draw himself a bath.  He filled

it to the overflow, and as he settled into it the front door burst open

and Mitzi came in like the north wind.

Where are you, warrior?  She was banging the doors.  I saw your car in

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