Vortex (17 page)

He swayed upright.

“All right. Here’s the deal. First, you let us out of your damned jail. Then you arrest those bastards who attacked us. ”

Ian took a shallow breath, calmer now.

“And after that’s done, we’ll talk about how you can pay us back for the damage to our stuff and for this.

” His fingers gently brushed the painful swelling behind his left ear.

Finished, he stood waiting for the expected explosion and immediate order for his expulsion.

It didn’t come.

Instead, the commandant simply smiled coldly.

“I shall not debate the matter with you, Meneer Sheffield. I reserve that for those I consider equals. And you are most emphatically not my equal.” His hands idly caressed the polished surface of his desk.

He stared straight into Ian’s eyes.

“You are a guest in this country, meneer. You exist at my sufferance. I suggest you remember that in the future.”

Ian held his breath, surprised into silence. Were they going to let him stay?

The commandant’s thin, cold smile vanished.

“You have much to learn about the role you can play in South Africa, Meneer Sheffield. We Afrikaners are not the kind of weak willed decadent, impoverished tribesmen with whom you socalled journalists can play god. We do not care in the least what you and your prating colleagues think of us or our policies. ”

A fanatical gleam appeared in the man’s pale, un winking eyes.

“The true God alone shall judge our actions to save our folk. ”

“If that’s the case, why not just kick us out and have done with it?” Ian heard Knowles choke back a muttered warning to shut up.

The Afrikaner steepled his hands.

“I assure you most solemnly, meneer, if it were up to me alone, I would gladly send you back to your own godless land by the next available transport.

“But”—the hands separated and spread into the semblance of an uncaring shrug-“it seems that there are those in higher places who have some small interest in you and your friend. So I shall be merciful this once. You’re free to go. Immediately. ” The commandant jerked his head toward the office door and lowered his eyes to the open file on his desk, apparently dismissing the whole matter from his mind.

Scarcely able to believe his good fortune, Ian was halfway to the door before he remembered their damaged gear. The green-eye shade boys in New

York were bound to squawk unless he and Knowles made every effort to find another way to pay for the needed repairs and replacements. It was the same old story. If the network bosses liked you, you could even get away with writing off a trip to the south of France as a research expense. But woe betide anyone else who turned in an expense account showing anything more pricey than lunches at the local equivalent of McDonald’s.

With that in mind, he decided to press his luck a little further. He spun round sharply-stepping briskly aside as one of the guards treading close on his heels nearly blundered into him.

“Not so fast, Commandant. What about our camera and sound equipment? Who’s going to pick up the tab for the stuff your goon squad smashed?”

The Afrikaner’s head came up as fast as a striking snake’s. Despite the man’s earlier contemptuous words, Ian was shocked by the undisguised hatred apparent on his face.

“Get out of my office at once! And be thankful that only your verdomde equipment was broken. It can be repaired. Skulls and ribs are not so easily mended!”

The expression of open anger faded from the commandant’s face, replaced by a calmer, colder, infinitely more chilling look of calculated malice.

“Do not cross my path again, Meneer Sheffield. It would not be the action of a wise or healthy man. I trust I make myself clear?”

He glanced at the guards still standing to either side.

“Now take these

Uitlanders out of my sight before I change my mind and have them locked up again.”

The Afrikaner’s pale, hate-filled eyes followed them all the way out the door.

Neither man spoke until they were near the main gate leading out of the

Magistrates’ Court complex. Then, at last, Sam Knowles broke the tension-filled silence.

“Jesus Christ, Ian. Remind me to loan you my copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People before you get us both killed.”

Ian laughed softly, a somewhat forced, embarrassed laugh.

“Sorry, Sam.

I’ve learned not to eat with my hands in fancy restaurants, but I guess nobody ever taught me how to keep my big mouth shut around junior-grade gestapo wanna bees like that
SOB
. back there.”

“Yeah.” Knowles thumped him lightly on the shoulder.

“Well, the next time we’re looking down someone’s gun barrel, try to remember that discretion is always the best part of valor. Will you do that for me, huh?”

Ian nodded.

“Good.” The little cameraman shifted gears abruptly.

“Now just who the hell in Pretoria do you suppose likes you enough to spring us from the pokey?”

Ian didn’t answer him until they had passed a pair of armed sentries and stood blinking in the brilliant winter-afternoon sunshine. A taxicab sat parked along the curb.

“I don’t know anyone that high up in Vorster’s good graces, but I know someone who does,” Ian said.

The taxi’s rear door opened and a beautiful, auburn-haired woman got out.

Knowles pursed his lips in a silent, appreciative whistle.

“I see. I do believe I begin to sec.”

Through suddenly narrowed eyes, the short, stocky cameraman watched his friend and partner take the steps two at a time down to meet Emily van der Heijden..

JULY
20-D. F.
MALAN
INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT
,

NEAR
CAPE
TOWN

The announcement buzzed and crackled through the overhead loudspeakers in the same dry, garbled, and disinterested voice used in airports all the world over.

“South Africa Airways Flight one forty-eight to Johannesburg is now ready for boarding. All passengers with confirmed seating are requested to come to the Jetway at this time. ”

Ian felt his pulse race as Emily kissed him hard one last time and pulled away.

He started to reach for her and stopped as she shook her head sadly.

“I

must leave.” She blinked away sudden tears.

“I’m afraid there’s no more time.”

Ian fumbled for the handkerchief in his jacket pocket and then gave it up as he saw Emily sling the traveling case over her shoulder.

“Look, if you don’t want to go, then don’t. Stay here with me.”

Another headshake, slightly more vehement.

“I cannot, no matter how much I would wish it. My father is a hard man, Ian. To him, a bargain is a bargain-no matter how forced it might be. So if I do not return home as I promised, he’ll have you rearrested and sent back to America. And I cannot let that happen.”

Ian looked down at the scuffed tile floor. What was happening to her was largely his fault. She’d learned of his arrest when he hadn’t shown up for a dinner date the day of the riot. Nearly out of her mind with worry, she’d done what she would ordinarily have regarded as unthinkable. She’d phoned her father, asking for his help.

As the new government’s deputy minister of law and order, Marius van der

Heijden had the clout needed to spring an unruly pair of American journalists. The man was also a scheming, blackmailing bastard, Ian thought angrily. His price for their release had been Emily’s surrender of her hard won independence-the independence she’d won only after years of stormy argument and outright shouting matches. In her father’s words, she was to be “obedient.”

Emily softly touched his arm.

“You understand?”

He swore in frustration.

“Jesus Christ, this isn’t the Middle Ages! What’s he expect you to do for him… cook, clean, and keep house like every other good little Afrikaner girl?”

The ghost of a smile appeared on Emily’s face.

“No, he knows me better than that. He just wants to keep me away from you and your ‘immoral’ influence.”

The faint smile disappeared.

“Though of course he will expect me to help him around the house. To serve as hostess for parties and braais. ” She used the Afrikaans word for barbecues.

Ian picked up her other bag, and together they walked toward the passenger line forming at the gate.

Emily kept talking, as if she hoped to bury her sadness under a flow of everyday conversation.

“You see, my father’s new position compels him to be more social. And it is important, I suppose, that he be able to show the kind of home his colleagues would regard as ‘normal.”

”

Ian nodded, but couldn’t think of anything to say. He knew how much Emily valued her freedom and how much she loathed her father’s extremist political positions. Now she was willingly going back to everything she had once escaped.

And all for him.

Her sacrifice made his own troubles seem small in comparison.

“Boarding pass, please. ” He looked up. They were already at the gate. A young, uniformed flight attendant had her hand out for Emily’s ticket.

“Look, can I write or call you?” The desperation in his voice was audible.

Emily’s voice dropped to a bare, husky whisper he had to strain to hear clearly.

“No… that would be the worst thing. My father must believe I have broken entirely with you.”

“But…”

She gently laid a finger across his lips, stilling his protest.

“I know,

Ian. It is terrible. But believe this. I will contact you as soon as I can.

As soon as I can find a way to do so without my father’s knowledge.”

Her hand dropped away from his face.

The flight attendant coughed lightly.

“Please, I must have your boarding pass.”

Silently, Emily handed over her ticket and stepped onto the carpeted ramp leading to the waiting plane. Then she turned.

“Remember that I love you, Ian Sheffield.

She disappeared around a bend in the ramp before he could say anything past the sudden lump in his throat.

Ian stood watching until he saw her plane lift off the runway and turn east, sunlight winking painfully off its silvery wings.

JULY
22-
SWARTKOP
MILITARY
AIRFIELD
,
NEAR
PRETORIA

The single-engined Kudu light utility aircraft rolled to a gentle, shuddering stop near the end of the oil-stained concrete taxiway. Even before the propeller had stopped spinning, ground crewmen were on their way, moving to tie down the Kudu’s wings against sudden gusts of wind.

Commandant Henrik Kruger clambered awkwardly out of the plane’s cramped cockpit, stretched, and then leaned in to shake the pilot’s hand.

“Thanks,

Pieter. A good fast flight, that. I may even have an appetite for lunch.”

He checked his watch. He had nearly an hour left before his scheduled meeting with the chief of staff for operations.

“Look, I should be back from the Ministry in three or four hours. Can you stand by to run me back to Upington then?”

The plane’s pilot, wi Air Force captain, grinned back.

“No sweat,

Kommandant. Take your time. They’ve got a blery good officers’ mess here.

Once I get some food in my belly and put some petrol in the tanks, I’ll be ready to go whenever you say the word.”

“Magtig!” Kruger pulled his worn, leather briefcase out from under the seat and stepped back, touching his cap to make sure it was still on straight over his short-cropped, brown hair. Satisfied, he picked his way around the outstretched landing gear. A few meters away, a soldier waiting by a flag-decked car stiffened to attention. His transport to the Ministry of

Defense, no doubt.

“Hey, Kommandant!”

He glanced over his shoulder at the cockpit’s open side window.

The Kudu’s pilot flashed a thumbs-up signal.

“Give them hell, sir!”

Kruger stifled a smile, nodded briskly instead, and moved on toward the waiting staff car. As he’d suspected, the whole base must know why he’d been summoned to Pretoria at such short notice. Secrets were almost impossible to keep in close knit active-duty combat units such as his 20th

Rifles.

It certainly hadn’t taken long for his latest situation report to generate results. Though that certainly wasn’t particularly surprising. Battalion commanders-even highly decorated battalion commanders-didn’t often send such scathing indictments of current policy to the Defense Staff Council, but Kruger had grown weary of asking his men to do the impossible. Too many of the Permanent Force’s best battalions were being used to suppress disorder in the black townships instead of being stationed on the border where they were so desperately needed.

And desperate wasn’t too strong a word, he thought grimly. Given the current military and political situation, the frontier with Namibia simply could not be adequately defended. There were too few troops trying to cover too much territory.

Some staff officers at the Ministry of Defense had done their best to help out. They’d made sure that units such as the 20th had first call on replacements and the latest weapons and hardware.

More important, requisitions for food, fuel, and ammo

were processed with almost unmilitary speed and efficiency. In the final analysis, though, those were simply half measures-interim steps that relieved some of the day-to-day burden on Kruger and his fellow commanders without in any way solving the strategic dilemma they faced. Pretoria must either provide more men and equipment to guard the border or find other ways to end the ANC’s renewed guerrilla campaign Kruger shook his head, aware that the new men in charge weren’t likely to make the right decisions. Like a sizable number of South African Defense

Force officers, he’d privately applauded the Haymans government’s moves toward some reasonable accommodation with the nation’s black majority. The key word was reasonable. No one he knew supported the absurd notion of an eventual one-man, one-vote system for South Africa. The failing array of dictatorships scattered across black Africa showed the dangers of such a course. But few officers could hide from the knowledge that continued white efforts to hold all political power inevitably meant an ongoing and probably endless guerrilla war-a war marked by minor, strategically meaningless victories and a steady stream of maimed or dead men.