PSALMS

Chapter 19 of the book-“NON-CONTRADICTORY CONTRADICTIONS”

XIX Psalms

23  1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Psalms: Chapter 23:1-6 (The Holy Bible, New International Version)

In this chapter we continue the story from chapter 13-1 Chronicles-where we left Peter about to accept an attractive offer for the purchase of his blog-“The Gossip Column”-by a South African Newspaper.

1

Peter had always loved flying and it was, therefore, not surprising that he was in a very good mood as he landed at O R Tambo International Airport, in Johannesburg, South Africa. This was his second trip in as many weeks after his successful negotiations on selling his blog to a South African newspaper. The negotiations had led to the formation of a company in which the newspaper was to have a controlling shareholder stake of 60%, with Peter retaining the balance of 40%. Peter was being paid a substantial sum for the 60% portion of his blog and he was quite pleased about that because in reality (as far as the work was concerned), he was going to continue to have full control.

The South African Airways Airbus 319-100 landed smoothly and quickly taxied towards the terminal building. Peter could not stop thinking about how lucky he had been to get this deal. During the negotiations, the editor of the paper had revealed that he had a lot of leads for stories which Peter could pursue and consider publishing. These were stories that the paper itself could not publish right away because some of the sources of the stories had not been fully substantiated. Peter’s blog, however, being a “Gossip Column”, could release these stories straight away and worry about the consequences later. There was always a way in which a “Gossip Column” could get away with publishing stories that had “suspect” sources.

Peter’s plane had landed a long way from the main terminal building. The route to the terminal involved crossing two run-ways as the plane taxied on the ground. It was during the crossing of the second run-way that the accident happened. An Emirates Airbus 380 that had presumably been cleared for landing, came swooping down on the run-way that Peter’s plane was crossing and virtually started landing on Peter’s plane. The huge Airbus 380 hit the smaller plane with such force that one of the wings on Peter’s plane sheared off and the engine on that side of the plane caught fire.

Peter could not believe what was happening. Such accidents are not meant to happen. There were 97 passengers on the plane and pandemonium soon ensued as people scrambled for the emergency exits. Peter was also panicking but he managed to slide down the emergency shoot on the side of the plane that was still intact.

Amazingly, everybody who was on board the plane managed to get out. None had serious injuries. Peter did not have a single scratch and that was true for most of the passengers. They were being directed away from the plane as it was now on fire. Fears were that the plane could explode at any time. This did not happen, however, because the fire fighters did a splendid job of extinguishing the fire.

Some more fire engines were racing towards the huge Emirates Airbus 380 which had managed to lend safely despite some extensive damage to its under-carriage. What a day, Peter thought and thanked GOD that he was alive and virtually unscathed.

2

In the first few weeks that followed his dramatic entry into South Africa, Peter settled into his new surroundings without experiencing any more surprises or shocks. He was working mostly from his apartment in Sandton, which was now home. He only went to the newspaper offices if he wanted to meet with the Chief Editor to discuss some leads.

The stories he published in the first five weeks, although of much interest to his readers, were, nonetheless, far from being controversial. It was only in the sixth week that he touched on a “hot wire.” As with most of his stories these days, this one came through a source provided by the newspaper.

The story was political. Somebody had got wind of a plan by one of the political parties to infiltrate the youth wing of a major rival party and destabilise it from within. The source claimed that this plan was already in the implementation stage. To add some veracity to this story, there had been several recent high level defections between the two political parties in question. What was not certain was whether the plan for destabilisation was really a fact.

Initially, the newspaper had wanted to run the story but it was later decided that it might be better to test the waters by running something in the “Gossip Column”.

3

When Peter published the story it caused quite a sensation. In fact, he started to get some death threats via the comments section of the blog. At first, Peter did not take these threats seriously but he changed his mind quickly when on one evening he came out of a restaurant to find that all the tyres of his BMW had been slashed. This had happened while he had been having dinner with a friend from the newspaper. They had parked the car is a supposedly secure parking area but this had not stopped whoever had slashed the tyres from doing so. It was, obvious that whoever had done it wanted Peter to be frightened and discontinue following the “pseudo-defections” story.

Peter knew that some of these political thugs could really be dangerous and he was now seriously worried. He left the car where it was for the entire night and only made arrangements for it to be collected by people from his BMW service centre the following morning. That same day, he discussed the episode with some of his close acquaintances at the paper and everybody encouraged him to continue with the story.

Peter was not so sure about this. He was genuinely worried that he could come to some harm. These other guys were tough, seasoned journalists who were fearless and that is why they found it easy to encourage Peter to continue with the story. Peter was not made of the same mould. He was scared.

What was he going to do?

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