The Rozabal Line by Ashwin Sanghi

remember? We don't really earn all that much!'

    'Oh shut up, Vincent! Your Nana has made some serious money from her Eastern mumbo-jumbo. I'm paying. So you damn well get your holy ass on that blessed flight, Father Vincent Sinclair!'

Chapter Six
    Harare, Zimbabwe, 1965

    Terry Acton was born on 11 November, the very day that Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia, made a unilateral declaration of independence for the country.

    Terry's father had moved to Rhodesia from England upon being offered a position at the De Beers Mining Company. He had married the daughter of his British supervisor a year after moving and had decided to make Rhodesia his home. Terry had been born two years later.

    Unfortunately, Rhodesia was in turmoil. The government of Prime Minister Ian Smith was a white minority running an apartheid regime. The country was in civil war with the rebels being led by Robert Mugabe, who eventually seized power in 1980.

    Mugabe's regime was one of corruption, sleaze, torture, and dictatorship.24 The Actons were forced to leave the country and return to England in 1991.

    London, UK, 1991

    Terry's parents ended up losing their lifesavings when they fled Zimbabwe.
    Circumstances made them poor East-Enders, living in the working-class borough of Hackney.

    The economy was in recession and Terry's father was lucky to get a blue-collar factory job at Lesney's. Lesney's factory was located in Hackney Wick, and produced 27

    Matchbox toys such as miniature cars and trucks. Lesney's was the main employer in the area; in fact, it was pretty much the only employer in the area.25

    Senior Acton had not taken the knocks well. He became an obnoxious, red-nosed drunk who excelled at beating his wife often and his kids occasionally, depending upon the level of alcohol in his bloodstream. Little Terry was a frail and frightened little boy who suffered from asthma, a chronic respiratory condition that weakened him further.

    Terry's mother was an angel from heaven who somehow managed to lock away her emotional and physical scars to produce the finest Yorkshire pudding, rhubarb crumble and shepherd's pie in England for her son. Terry loved returning home from school to his mother, but he hated his father coming home.

    He was relieved when his father shot himself when the Lesney's factory, one of the last few remaining businesses in Hackney, shut shop and made him redundant.

    Knocks in his early years would make Terry even more determined to succeed at school and eventually in life. The Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford two years later was his ticket to the future.

    He silently thanked Cecil John Rhodes.

    Cecil John Rhodes, the founder of the state of Rhodesia, which eventually became Zimbabwe, had made his millions by shrewdly investing in the diamond mines of southern Africa. In 1880, he had created the De Beers Mining Company, which would eventually bring him great power, fortune and recognition.26

    In 1877, Rhodes would contend: 'We British are the finest race in the world; and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.'

    Rhodes would die young at the age of just forty-nine. In his last will and testament, he would leave his fabulous wealth to create a secret society: one that would allow Britannia to rulethe world. It was projected by Rhodes that by 1920 there would be around 2,000 to 3,000 men in their prime scattered all over the globe, each having been mathematically selected to achieve the goals set out by Rhodes.

    Rhodes had confided to a close friend that it was necessary to create 'a society copied . . . from the Jesuits . . . a secret society organised, like Loyola's, supported by the accumulated wealth of those whose aspiration is to do something . . . a scheme to take the government of the whole world!'

    The Rhodes Scholarships, which would become very famous, would merely be a tool to recruit the most promising and bright future leaders--in whichever arena they chose to work--in