The Perfect Assassin

Prologue

The longshoremen scrambled across the pier to finish their task. Lured to work by an offer of triple-time wages, the few who had shown up were getting anxious. The cargo had arrived late, and tonight everyone had more important things to do. Tall floodlights presided over the operation, their sulfuric glow staining the night sky an obscure yellowish hue, and calm winds were no help in flushing away the noxious haze that had settled over the city. Mostly it came from the fires outside town, but now mobs were adding to the conflagration, looting and burning in the city itself as the last viable corner of the Republic of South Africa slid to oblivion.

At 2,000 tons, and 150 feet along the waterline, Polaris Venture was not among the largest ships to have visited the Port of Cape Town in the last week. She was, however, the only vessel berthed there now, and that singular presence managed to enhance her stature. A converted trawler built by Sterkoder of Norway, her lines were decidedly square, as if to attest to the solid vessel she was. Polaris Venture had been in port for eight hours, which was about as long as anyone had stayed lately, but having taken on her cargo it was time to go. The loading crane and gangways backed away, and dockhands on the pier tossed heavy mooring lines into the water. Polaris Venture’s crew scurried around deck to hoist up the lines, then her single screw was engaged and she began to crawl up the channel.

The ship moved slowly toward the jetties and open ocean. A leviathan in the narrow waterway, she’d soon become a speck on the vast ocean ahead. Sliding beyond the lights of the pier, Polaris Venture’s profile fell to a vague silhouette. By the time she’d cleared the jetties and picked up speed, her running lights and a dim glow of white light from the bridge were all that punctuated an otherwise black ocean. Minutes later these extinguished, a nicely symbolic end to the entire affair, as the port would likely not see traffic again for a very long time.

The ugly noose of apartheid had been lifted over a decade ago, but those expecting quick rise of a new and just South Africa had been roundly disappointed. Like a failing dam, the cracks had started slowly. Festering land disputes and tribal arguments seeped out. Corrupt politics added pressure until, seemingly overnight, the madness burst through. The authorities were little help, they having already begun to split and polarize to the different camps. It was a textbook civil war left behind in Polaris Venture’s wake, one whose course to an end would be anything but a predictable, straight line.

Back along an empty pier the dockhands dispersed, many silently wondering if they’d ever see work here again. A second group of men, those who had delivered Polaris Venture’s cargo to the docks, gathered uncertainly around their leader. With the final seams of order shredding in a country that had been undone by racial bitterness, it was an odd counterpoint that the two dozen soldiers were equally divided — twelve black and twelve white. Their uniforms were sanitized, displaying rank, but no regimental patches or other insignia. This much had been a firm directive, related to the night’s work. But it was also an appropriate terminus for a unit whose sole mission had just departed on the high tide.

The detail’s leader, a colonel, had little to offer. With a few words of congratulation on a job well done, he awkwardly dismissed his troops — to what or where nobody was sure. The men milled about for a few minutes to say their own good-byes, then disbanded in groups of two or three, knowing they would likely never see each other again.

The colonel was the last to leave. He paused on the pier, his thoughts still resting with his troops. He was an honorable sort who, while not particularly religious, did find comfort in the occasional divine request. The colonel stood at water’s edge, closed his eyes, and offered a prayer for his men, a simple plea that their treason might be lost in the chaos.