Vortex (4 page)

Bekker safed his own rifle, then relaxed a little. He made sure his seat belt was secure, then lit a cigarette. Drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, he went through every step of the actiOD-looking for mistakes or things he could have done better. It was a familiar after-battle ritual, one that cleared his mind and calmed his nerves.

Several minutes later, he finished his cigarette and tossed the butt out the open door. Some of his men were still talking quietly, but many had closed their eyes and were fast asleep. Posthattle exhaustion and a long ride were having their effect.

Nkume seemed to be the only person full of energy. He was visibly relieved at having come through the raid unscathed. And he had a much brighter future ahead. South African intelligence had promised him much for opening the ANC’s secret safe. Not only would he be spared a prison term or death, he’d also be given an airline ticket to England, a forged

British passport, and a large cash payment to start a new life.

Bekker saw Nkume smiling and waved to him. Nkume waved back, all his earlier fears forgotten in his exhilaration. The South African captain patted the empty seat by his side and waved the black over.

Bent low beneath the cabin ceiling, Nkume grabbed a metal frame to steady himself against the helicopter’s motion and made his way across to

Bekker. He leaned over the captain, saying something that Bekker couldn’t make out over the engine noise. The South African nodded anyway and reached out to put his left hand on Nkume’s shoulder.

With his right hand, he reached across his chest to the bayonet knife on his web gear. In one fast motion he pulled it out of its sheath and jammed it into Nkume’s chest, just below the sternum.

The black’s face twisted in surprise and pain. He let go of the ceiling and grabbed at his chest, nearly doubled over by the fire in his heart.

Bekker could see him trying to scream, to say something, to make some sound.

Bekker pulled his knife free and yanked the wounded man toward the open door. Nkume realized what was happening, but was in too much pain to resist. Too late, one hand feebly grabbed at the doorframe, but his body was already outside the Puma and falling. The empty, unsettled land below would swallow Nkume’s corpse.

Bekker didn’t even watch him fall. He cleaned off his knife and resheathed it, then looked around the cabin. The few men who were awake were looking at him with surprise, but when he met their eyes, they looked away, shrugging. If the commander wanted to kill the informer, he probably had a good reason.

Bekker had already been given the only reason he needed. Orders were orders. Besides, he agreed with them. Anyone who turned his coat once could do it again, and this operation was too sensitive to risk compromising. And Nkume’s crimes were too grievous to forgive. South

Africa’s security forces might use such a man, but they would be sure to use him up.

His last duty performed, Rolf Bekker closed his eyes and slept.

MAY
23-
ANC
OPERATIONS
CENTER
,
GAWAMBA
,

ZIMBABWE

A light, fitful breeze brought the smell of death to Col. Sese Luthuli’s nostrils.

He took a careful breath and held it for a moment, willing himself to ignore the thick, rancid aroma of rotting meat. Luthuli had seen and smelled too many corpses in his twenty five years with the African

National Congress to let a few more bother his stomach. The sound of strangled coughing behind him reminded the colonel that most of his bodyguards weren’t so experienced. He frowned. That would have to change.

To liberate South Africa, Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, needed hardened combat veterans, not green-as-grass boys like these. Or like the fools who’d let themselves be butchered here at Gawamba.

Luthuli eyed the orderly row of dead men before him angrily. Twelve bullet-riddled bodies covered by a dirty, bloodstained sheet. Twelve more trophies for the Afrikaners to crow over.

“Colonel””

Luthuli turned to face his chief of intelligence, a young man whose ice-cold eyes were magnified by thick, wire rimmed spectacles.

“We’ve finished going through the wreckage.”

“And?” I,uthuli kept his voice even, concealing his anxiety and impatience.

“The document cache is intact. I’ve been able to account for everything

Cosate and his staff were working on. Including the staging plans for

Broken Covenant.”

The colonel felt slightly better at that. He’d been fearful that Broken

Covenant, the most ambitious operation ever conceived by the
ANC
, had been blown by the South African raid. Still, he resisted the temptation to relax completely.

“Any signs of tampering?”

“None.” The chief of intelligence took off his glasses and started polishing them on his sleeve.

“Everything else upstairs has been ransacked-desks emptied, closets and cupboards pulled apart, the usual trademarks of the Afrikaner bastards. But they didn’t find the safe.”

“You’re sure?” Luthuli asked.

The younger man shrugged.

“One can never be absolutely certain in these cases, Colonel. But I’ve talked to survivors from the garrison. Things were pretty hot and heavy around here during the firefight. I doubt the

Afrikaners had time to thoroughly search the center before they pulled out.

If they came looking for documents, I think they emptied the desks and called it a success.” He looked smug.

Luthuli’s temper flared. He swung round and stabbed a single, lean finger at the row of corpses.

“It was a success, Major! They’ve put rather a serious dent in our Southern Operations staff, wouldn’t you say?”

The smug look vanished from the other man’s face, wiped away by Luthuli’s evident anger. He stammered out a reply.

“Yes, Colonel. That’s true. I didn’t mean to imply-”

Luthuli cut him off with an abrupt gesture.

“Never mind. It’s unimportant now.”

He stared south, toward the far-off border of South Africa, invisible beyond the horizon. Gawamba’s vulnerability had already been all too convincingly demonstrated. They’d been lucky once.

They might not be lucky a second time if the Afrikaners came back. He shook his head wearily at the thought. No profit could be gained by a continued
ANC
presence in the town. It was time to leave.

He turned to his intelligence chief.

“What is important, Major, is to get every last scrap of paper out of this death trap and back to Lusaka where we can assure its safety. I’ll expect you to be ready to move in an hour.

Is that clear?”

The younger man nodded, sketched a quick salute, and hurried into the fire-blackened building to begin work.

Luthuli’s eyes followed him for an instant and then slid back to the cloth-covered corpses lining the street. The spiritless husk of Martin

Cosate lay somewhere under that bloodspattered sheet. The colonel felt his hands clench into fists. Cosate had been a friend and comrade for more years than Luthuli wanted to remember.

“You will be avenged, Martin,” he whispered, scarcely aware that he was speaking aloud. An apt phrase crept into his mind, though he couldn’t remember whether it came from those long-ago days at the mission school or from his university training in Moscow.

“They whom you slay in death shall be more than those you slew in life.”

Luthuli forced a grim smile at that. It was literally true. Cosate’s planning for Broken Covenant had been flawless. And if the operation worked, his dead friend would be avenged a thousand times over.

The colonel marched back to his camouflaged Land Rover, surrounded by bodyguards eager to be away from Gawamba’s dead. The long drive back to

Lusaka and vengeance lay ahead.

MAY
25-
OUTSIDE
THE
HOUSES
OF
PARLIAMENT
,

CAPE
TOWN

Ian Sheffield stood in the sunlight against a backdrop calculated to impress viewers-the Republic of South Africa’s Houses of Parliament, complete with tall, graceful columns, an iron’ rail fence, and a row of ancient oak shade trees lining

Government Avenue. A light breeze ruffled his fair hair, but he kept his face and blue-gray eyes fixed directly on the TV Minicam ahead.

To some of the network executives who’d first hired him as a correspondent, that face and those eyes were his fortune. In their narrow worldview, his firm jaw, friendly, easygoing smile, and frank, expressive eyes made him telegenic without being too handsome. They’d regarded the fact that his looks were backed up by an analytical brain and a firstrate writing talent as welcome icing on the cake.

“South Africa’s most recent attack on those it calls terrorists comes at a bad time for the Haymans government. Bogged down in a growing economic and political crisis, this country’s white leaders have pinned their hopes on direct talks with the ANC-the main black opposition group. So far, more than a year of fitful, stop-and-start negotiations haven’t produced much:

the ANC’s return to open political organizing; a temporary suspension of its guerrilla war; and an agreement by both sides to keep talking about more substantive reform.

“But even those small victories have been jeopardized by last week’s commando raid deep inside neighboring Zimbabwe. With more than thirty
ANC
guerrillas, Zimbabwean soldiers, and policemen dead, it’s hard to see how

President Haymans and his advisors can expect further progress from talks aimed at achieving peace and political reform. From talks that moderates here had hoped would help end the continuing unrest in South Africa’s black townships.

“Now the government’s own security forces have helped bury even that faint hope, and they’ve buried it right beside the men killed three days ago in

Zimbabwe.

“This is Ian Sheffield, reporting from Cape Town, South Africa. ”

Ian stopped talking and waited for the red Minicam operating light to wink off. When it did, he smiled in relief and carefully stepped down off the camera carrying case he’d been standing on-wondering for the thousandth time why the best camera angles always seemed to be two feet higher than his six-foot4 all body.

“Good take, Jan. ” Sam Knowles, Sheffield’s cameraman, sound man and technical crew all rolled up into one short, compact body, pulled his eyes away from the Minicam playback monitor and smiled.

“You almost sounded like you knew what the hell you were talking about.”

Ian smiled back.

“Why, thanks, Sam. Coming from an ignorant techno slob like you, that’s pretty high praise.” He tapped his watch.

“How much tape did I waste?”

“Fifty-eight seconds.”

Ian unclipped the mike attached to his shirt and tossed it to Knowles.

“Fifty-eight seconds in Cape Town. Let’s see… He loosened his tie.

“I’d guess that’s worth about zero seconds in New York for tonight’s broadcast.”

Knowles sounded hurt.

“Hey, c’mon. You might get something more out of it.”

Ian shook his head.

“Sorry, but I gotta call ‘em like I see em. ” He started to shrug out of his jacket and then thought better of it.

Temperatures were starting to fall a bit as southern Africa edged into winter.

“The trouble is that you just shot fifty-eight seconds of analysis, not hard news. And guess who’s gonna wind up on the cutting-room floor when the network boy” stack us up against some gory big-fig accident footage from Baton Rouge.”

Knowles I, knelt to pack his camera away.

“Yeah. Well, then start praying for a nice juicy catastrophe somewhere close by. I promised Momma

I’d win a Pulitzer Prize before I turned forty. At this rate, I’m not ever going to make it.”

Ian smiled again and turned away before Knowles could see the smile fade.

The cameraman’s last comment cut just a bit too close to his own secret hopes and fears to be truly funny. Television correspondents weren’t eligible for Pulitzers, but there were other awards, other forms of recognition, that showed you were respected by the public and by your peers. And none of them seemed likely to come Ian Sheffield’s way—at least not while he was stuck broadcasting from the Republic of South

Africa.

Stuck was the right word to describe his current career, he decided. It wasn’t a word that anyone would have used up until the past several months.

He’d been what people called a fast-tracker. An honors graduate from

Columbia who’d done a bare one-year stint with a local paper before moving on to bigger and better jobs. He’d worked as an investigative reporter for a couple more years before jumping across the great journalistic divide from print to television. Luck had been with him there, too. He’d gone to work for a Chicago-area station without getting sidetracked into “soft” stories such as summer fads, entertainment celebrities, or the latest diet craze. Instead, he’d made his name and earned a network slot with an explosive weeklong series on drug smuggling through O”Hare International

Airport. Once at the network, a steady stream of more hardhitting pieces had gained the attention of the higher-ups in New York. They’d even slated him to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Capitol Hill beat in Washington,

D.C.

That marked Ian Sheffield as a star. It was a short step from Capitol Hill reporting to the White House slot itself. And that, in turn, was the surest route to an anchor position or another prime-time news show. At thirty-two, success had seemed almost inevitable.

And then he’d made his mistake. Nothing big. Nothing that would have mattered much in a less ego-intensive business.

He’d been invited to appear on a
PBS
panel show called “Bias in the Media.”

One of the network’s top anchormen had also been there. Ian could still remember the scene with painful clarity. The anchor, asked about evidence of bias in nightly news shows, had answered with a long-winded, pompous dissertation about his own impartiality.