Vortex

CHAPTER 17 Retaliation

OCTOBER 24-DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA

Erik Muller stared at the television screen in horror. What had seemed so natural-so wonderful-in that Sun City hotel room looked so sordid and depraved when seen on videotape. He shivered uncontrollably, feeling both feverishly hot and ice-cold at the same time. His worst nightmare had come to life and shown itself in broad daylight.

The tape had been delivered to his office earlier in the day-enclosed in an unsealed manila envelope and marked only by a typed card specifying that it was “personal and confidential.” His idiotic secretary could remember nothing beyond the fact that it had been dropped off by a courier from one of the city’s many delivery services.

As Muller watched, the grainy, half-lit black-and-white images vanished, replaced by a buzzing, static-filled test pattern that showed the tape was over. He sat motionless for several minutes, feeling sick and completely unable to summon up the energy needed to reach over and shut off the

VCR. His thoughts were far away, reaching back over time to the moment when surrendering to his, physical needs had laid him open to this treacherous attack. Who could have known? And what did they want-his death or disgrace, or something else entirely?

Muller fumbled for the receiver as his phone rang.

“Yes?”

“A call for you, Director. Something about that videotape. “

He tried to suck in air and failed. The monster of darkness and blood he had feared for so long and so long denied had come for its payment at last.

The monster he himself had created. And now death or worse stared him full in the face.

“Director?”

Through a roaring in his ears, Muller heard his own voice answera voice made harsher by unsuppressed panic.

“Put the call through.”

A new voice came on the line. A woman’s voice speaking fluent Afrikaans.

“Director Muller?”

“What do you want?”

“Copies of the documents seized by your special intelligence team during the commando attack on Gawamba. ” The woman paused briefly.

“The documents revealing the ANC’s intention to attack our president’s train. “

The Blue Train? Muller hadn’t thought it possible that anything else could shock him. He suddenly realized that he’d been wrong. Dead wrong. An unexpectedly analytical part of his brain evaluated the woman’s choice of words and decided that she was educated and probably a native-born

Afrikaans speaker.

He tried playing for time.

“I don’t know what documents you are talking about. No such papers exist.”

The woman’s words were cold and uncompromising.

“That’s a great pity,

Mencer Muller. Then I’m very much afraid that the videotape of your ‘indiscretion’ will find its way into the hands of your superiors.”

Muller gripped the phone tighter, feeling dizzy as his office seemed to swirl around him. Time. He needed more time to consider his options.

She dashed any hope of finding that time.

“You have ten seconds, meneer. If I hear nothing from you by then, I will ring off-and the matter will be out of my hands.”

The bitch! Muller sagged back in his chair. Whoever these blackmailers were, they had him in an unshakable grip. He had no illusions about how

Karl Vorster would react to seeing his intelligence chief in bed with a black man.

He swallowed hard and croaked, “All right, damn you. I agree. You’ll have the papers you want.”

“An eminently sensible decision,” the woman approved.

“Now here is how the exchange will be made. At ten tonight, you will come alone to the . “

Muller jotted down her instructions with a shaking hand and then sat motionless holding the phone for long minutes after she’d hung up. His mind wandered back and forth, figuratively tugging at the bars of the cage in which he found himself. There seemed to be no way out-no exit that did not lead to inevitable disaster. Either he betrayed his leader or he betrayed himself. Unless … Muller looked down at his notes. For all the cool, calm professionalism shown by the woman who’d called, the rendezvous site and procedures she’d outlined displayed a certain amateur touch. An amateurishness that might let him evade the noose he already felt tightening around his neck.

He made a decision and dialed a three-digit internal number. Even a slim chance of survival was better than none.

NETWORK STUDIOS, JOHANNESBURG

Four people crowded the cubbyhole that served as Ian Sheffield’s

Johannesburg office. Emily van der Heijden and Sam Knowles sat in a pair of chairs in front of his desk and Matthew Sibena stood behind them, still appearing faintly scandalized that the cameraman had offered him his seat.

The notion that white men might actually regard him as an equal partner still seemed impossible for the young man to comprehend fully.

Ian glanced at his watch. Two hours to go before their scheduled meeting with Erik Muller.

Their gear for the night’s outing stood in a separate pile on his desk.

A pair of walkie-talkies, binoculars, the videotape, a small pen flashlight, and a set of keys to the car Emily had rented under a phony name. Not much to challenge one of the leaders of South Africa’s state security services.

He unfolded a tattered city map showing Johannesburg and its surrounding suburbs.

“Okay, here’s how we’ll run this show tonight. The three of you will follow me out to the site in our pool car. Make sure you stop a couple hundred meters or so away and stay out of sight. ” He circled an area around the map.

“Probably about here-near the N-three interchange.

From there you could make a quick getaway onto either the expressway or

Lombardy Link if this stunt doesn’t work out the way we planned.”

He pointed to the walkie-talkies.

“We’ll use these to stay in touch. See any problems?”

Knowles nodded vigorously.

“You bet I do. One big one. You can’t be the guy who makes contact with Muller.”

“Why the hell not?” Ian winced at the way that came out. Sounding like a petulant child wasn’t the way to win arguments with either Emily or Sam

Knowles.

The other man jabbed a finger at his face.

“Your ugly mug is why, boyo.

You’re the on-camera talent in our little team. Odds are that this bastard’s even seen one or two of your censored reports. You show up tonight trying to exchange dirty videos for secret papers and whammo—he smacked his hands together-” we’re all heading for jail and a bullet in the back of the neck.”

Emily chimed in, “Sam is right, Ian. I will go in your place. Muller has heard my voice before anyway.”

Knowles shook his head.

“Nope. That’s no good either.”

Now it was Emily’s turn to sound like a child deprived of its favorite toy.

“And why not, Mr. Knowles?”

The cameraman smiled mirthlessly. “

“Cause our boy’s just as likely to have seen your picture before, too. Your dad’s his number one enemy inside the government, right?”

Emily frowned and then nodded reluctantly.

“So there’s really only one person who can do this … and that’s me.”

Knowles tapped himself on the chest.

Sibena cleared his throat and spoke, looking frightened but strangely determined.

“That is not quite so, Sam. I could go in your place.”

Knowles turned sideways in his chair to look the young black man in the face.

“I’m afraid not, Matt. Muller’s not only a bastard and a thug, he’s a racist bastard and a thug. I doubt if he’d ever agree to hand anything important over to you.”

Damn it. Ian clenched his hands below the level of his desk. Much as he hated to admit it, Knowles was absolutely, undeniably right. He was the only one of the four of them who had any chance at all of successfully pulling off this clandestine swap. Besides, the South African intelligence chief had already had a glimpse of Knowles once before in his guise as an annoying American tourist back at the Cascades Hotel.

Letting him see Knowles again wouldn’t expose them to any additional risk.

He swore one more time under his breath before looking up and catching his friend’s eye.

“All right, Sam, you win. You’ll be the one who gets to go pick up our prize.”

Ian just hoped there really was a prize for Knowles to collect.

MADDERFONTEIN MUNICIPAL REFUSE DUMP, JUST

OUTSIDE JOHANNESBURG

A chain link fence surrounded the Madderfontein Municipal Refuse Dump, enclosing mounds of broken furniture, rusting food tins, old tires, and all the other assorted scraps left by a wealthy civilization. A flat, featureless plain stretched northeast beyond the dump-a plain marked only by scattered small reservoirs and the distant, floodlit smokestacks of the

Klipfontein Organic Products Factory.

To the west, a multi lane highway, the N3 Motor Route, paralleled the dump. Glaring headlights revealed traffic moving north and south along the highway at high speed. To the east, only a few of Madderfontein’s separate, single family homes showed dim lights glowing from behind drawn

curtains. And barely one in three of the suburb’s streetlamps were lit, leaving dark pools of shadow at regular intervals.

A battered Ford Escort sat idling quietly in one of the patches of darkness-parked near a collection of scarred and rusting trash haulers and maintenance sheds used by the refuse dump’s work force. A man and a woman stood on either side of the Escort, their attention riveted on a car two hundred meters farther down the road.

Ian adjusted the focus on his binoculars, trying to make out more than the faint silvery outline of Knowles’s rented Mercedes as it sat under one of the few lit streetlamps. Nothing, damn it. The stretch of two-lane road running alongside the garbage dump was just too dark.

On the other side of the Escort, Emily stirred as the walkie talkie she held in her hand crackled into life.

“You guys awake? I think we’ve got company. Coming off the freeway ..

. “

Ian swiveled his binoculars right, scanning the exit ramp. There. The twin headlights of another car moving off the highway, fast at first but visibly slowing. He nodded abruptly. It had to be Muller.

Emily pressed the talk button.

“We see it, Sam. We’re ready. “

Ready. Sure they were, Ian thought bitterly. He’d had two hours to think of all the things that could go wrong with this secretive exchange. Two hours to realize just how much trouble they could be in if Muller didn’t come through with his end of the bargain or tried to double-cross them.

The other car, a Jaguar, turned left off the ramp and pulled alongside

Knowles’s Mercedes.

Emily’s walkie-talkie crackled again.

“It’s him. I can see him through the windshield.” Knowles sounded calm, with only the clipped endings of his words revealing any anxiety. Static hissed over the radio.

“He’s rolling his window down. Stand by.”

Ian tensed and stared hard through the binoculars. No good. He still couldn’t see anything but the bare shapes of the two parked cars. Seconds passed, dragging first into one minute and then into two. He could hear Emily whispering what he suspected was a prayer.

“I’m back-Did you miss me?” Beneath the banter, both of them could hear the relief in the cameraman’s voice.

“Transaction completed. Looks good so far.”

Thank God. Ian felt his back and neck muscles starting to un knot

Muller’s Jaguar pulled out from the curb, turned left again, and rolled away down the dimly lit Lombardy Link-heading for the ramp leading back onto the highway. Ian followed the Jag with his binoculars until it vanished among the stream of other cars and trucks moving north to

Pretoria. He turned and nodded to Emily.

She pressed the talk button again.

“It’s clear, Sam.”

“Far out! I’m on my way. Get ready to pop the champagne corks, ‘cause it looks like little Mrs. Knowles’s boy has hit the frigging jackpot this time! Names. Dates. The whole schmear! “

Ian laughed aloud, caught up in Knowles’s infectious enthusiasm.

Two hundred meters down the road, the Mercedes shifted gears and turned through a smooth half-circle to end up moving straight at them. Ian bent closer to the Escort’s open driver’s-side window.

“We’re almost ready to head for home, Matt. No fuss and no muss.”

Sibena smiled up at him from behind the wheel.

Suddenly the Mercedes braked and came to a complete stop while still twenty meters away.

Emily thumbed the walkie-talkie button.

“What’s wrong, Sam? Why have you stopped?”

Knowles sounded puzzled.

“I’m not really sure, There’s something rattling around in the back. I’m going to check it out. Hang on for a sec.” They both heard the click as his car door opened.

The Mercedes blew up in a spectacular rolling, billowing ball of fire-throwing pieces of glass, shards of metal, and shreds of rubber high into the air. For a split second, the explosion turned the night inside out-lighting up the surrounding landscape as though it were day.

Before the flash faded away, a roaring wall of superheated air knocked fan off his feet and rolled him hard against the Escort’s underbody. From the other side of the car, Emily cried out in terror as the shock wave threw her to the ground. Fragments pattered down all around, spanging off the

Escort’s chassis and starring its windshield in half a dozen places.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the noise of the explosion died away-leaving only a crackling roar as the Mercedes burned. Ian and Emily climbed shakily to their feet and stared in horror at the flames leaping high into the night sky.

Sam Knowles was gone, and the evidence of Vorster’s treachery had gone with him.

ALONG THE N3 MOTOR ROUTE, NORTH OF

JOHANNESBURG

Erik Muller pulled onto the shoulder and braked sharply. Then he slid out from behind the wheel of his Jaguar and got out to smile in satisfaction at the funeral pyre blazing brightly to the south. He stood watching the flames with his hands planted squarely on his hips. Good riddance. The mind-numbing fear that had been his constant companion since he’d first seen the videotape was already vanishing.

A dark-colored sedan turned off the highway and halted ten meters behind his car. Its driver’s-side door popped open and a tall, burly man clambered out. He glanced briefly at the fiery glow staining the southern sky and then trudged through the loose gravel until he stood before Muller.

“A fine job, Reynders. Very professional. I’ll see that you get a commendation for this night’s work.” Muller resisted the temptation to pat the taller man on the shoulder.

Field Agent Paul Reynders acknowledged the compliment with a brief, almost bored nod. In truth, it hadn’t been a terribly difficult or even interesting mission. The heaped mounds of trash had provided more than a dozen perfect hiding places within easy reach of what he had been told was an ANC agent’s parked car.

He frowned.

“There was another car, Director, with two or three occupants. But no one else.” Reynders shrugged.

“Definitely amateurs. I detected no signs of any other backups or surveillance teams.”

He glanced again at the fire still burning fiercely.

“I hadn’t expected the second car, but I changed the timer to catch it inside the blast as well. We should have no more problems with these spies.” He said it flatly, absolutely convinced that he spoke the truth.

Unfortunately for Erik Muller, Reynders couldn’t have been more mistaken.

NETWORK STUDIOS, JOHANNESBURG

The studio’s offices, workrooms, and broadcast facilities lay wrapped in silence and darkness-apparently utterly empty, abandoned for the night by a fast-shrinking American staff. Even the South African security guards who normally patrolled the hallways guarding valuable electronic gear were safe at home in bed.

The lights flickered on in the main editing room and stayed on-revealing banks of racked VCRs, monitors, reel-to-reel machines, and the squat, white-eased shape of the studio’s computerized-imaging system. Ian shut the door leading into the main hallway and sagged back against the wall.

“We’re clear. “

Emily looked up at him, her cheeks still stained by new dried tears.

“For now.”

“Yeah. For now. ” Ian rubbed angrily at a smear of groundin dirt from the road on his own face. It served as a grim reminder of the night’s disaster.

“But when the police identify Sam’s body and trace that car, they’ll be down on us like a ton of bricks.”

Images of the burning Mercedes and of Muller’s car speeding away to safety flashed into his mind and he slammed his fists into the wall, making both Emily and Matthew Sibena jump.

“Goddamnit! I should have known! I should have known that bastard was giving in too easily!”

He took a deep breath, fighting for control.

“We have a

day or so before things really start to cave in. Sam wasn’t carrying any ID tonight.” He looked somberly at Emily and Sibena.

“I’ll call my friend at the embassy. He should be able to rig up some kind of temporary papers for the two of you. With luck, we can be on a plane out of this fucking country before they start looking for us.”

Sibena nodded gratefully, but Emily turned away without saying anything.

She moved to the console where Knowles had spent so many of his waking hours splicing and re splicing tapes, bringing structure and theme out of a confusion of recorded sights and sounds.

Ian watched her quietly, praying that her Afrikaner stubborn streak wasn’t about to erupt. They’d gambled and lost. Now it was time to back away before any more of them lost their lives. He felt his hands ball into fists. Damn. He didn’t want to leave either. He wanted to nail Muller’s head on a pole-personally. But there was a world of difference between wanting something and being able to make it happen.

“Ian!” Emily’s voice sliced through his increasingly morose thoughts.

“Look at this!”

She held out a single sheet of notepaper.

“I found it there.

She pointed to a pile of videocassettes stacked neatly atop the computer casing.

He recognized Knowles’s sloppy, almost illegible handwriting.

“Some extra copies of the hotel hijinks … just in case the creep cheats. Get him for me.” Tears bluffed his vision until he blinked them away. The little cameraman had known he might not come back, and he’d still gone through with it.

Emily touched his arm.

“We can’t abandon this, Ian. It would mean that

Sam’s death was for nothing.”

He took her by the hand and looked deep into her eyes.

“Believe me, I don’t want to give up. It’s just that I can’t see any way left for us to get those damned documents without getting killed.

“

She started to nod and then stopped abruptly, sudden excitement creeping in past her sadness. Ian had seen that look before.

“You’ve got an idea?”

Emily answered by tugging him over to where they’d tacked up a spare city map of Johannesburg. She pointed to the site they’d picked for their disastrous rendezvous.

“Tell me, what was wrong with the area around

Madderfontein?”

Reluctantly, Ian mentally ran through the painful, frightening sequence of events yet again. As always, hindsight operated with perfect 20/20 vision.

“It was too empty, too deserted. We thought that’d help, but all it did was make it easy for Muller to zero in on us.”

Emily nodded seriously and pointed at another spot on the map.

“So if we try again, but here this time . She paused significantly.

Ian followed her finger and sucked in his breath, beginning to understand what she had in mind.

Emily saw the comprehension dawning in his eyes and motioned Matthew

Sibena closer. He was going to have to be a full partner from now on.

“This is how I believe we should proceed .. …. Both Ian and Sibena listened with mounting respect and confidence as she outlined her idea for snatching the Gawamba-raid documents out from under

Erik Muller’s nose.

OCTOBER 25-DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA

The early-mo ming phone call ruined what had begun as a delightfully routine day.

“Your cowardly treachery failed, meneer.”

Muller gripped the phone so hard that the blood drained out of his knuckles. That same cold, arrogant, demanding woman’s voice! Damn that idiot Reynders! He’d failed.

“Several of my friends wanted to distribute the tape immediately-to the

President, your cabinet colleagues, and other interested parties.”

Muller shivered, imagining the gleeful reaction of his enemies and the hatred of his former allies if they ever saw

those pornographic images, He licked suddenly dry lips.

“Well?”

“You are a fortunate man, Meneer Muller.” Her sarcasm bit deep.

“I

persuaded them to give you one last chance.”

He felt a faint stirring of hope. The fools were going to give him another chance to destroy them! He pulled a thick booklet of street maps closer to him and picked up a pencil.

“Where?”

The woman’s instructions were, like her voice, clear, clinical, and painstakingly precise. Muller frowned at the notes he’d scribbled.

Whoever these people were, they’d definitely learned a thing or two from their failure the night before. It wouldn’t be so easy this time. He cleared his throat.

“And what about the tape? When will I get this duplicate copy you claim to have?”

“You’ll get the tape when we are satisfied that you’ve given us the real documents. Not before.”

Muller grimaced.

“And how do I know that I can trust you?”

This time the woman didn’t bother concealing her contempt and her hatred.

“You don’t know, meneer. It’s that simple.” Her voice hardened.

“Do not attempt to double-cross us again, boy lover. You won’t get a third chance to save your neck. “

The phone went dead in his ear.

JOHANNESBURG RAILWAY STATION

The platforms of the Johannesburg Railway Station were jammed with a sea of irritable black and white faces.

Despite the Vorster government’s best repressive efforts, strict apartheid had proven impossible to reimpose on the city’s overburdened public transportation systemat least during peak commuting hours. A flood tide of tens of thousands of black store clerks, janitors, and factory hands leaving Johannesburg for their Soweto hovels mingled with thousands of white businessmen and wealthy, bored house wives heading for home in the rich northern suburbs. There wasn’t enough space under the train-station roof for the evening commute to be anything but a deafening, sweaty, milling madhouse.

The crowding made it impossible for the detachments of uniformed soldiers and police assigned to enforce order to do more than deter the most obvious kinds of crime or trouble making And they weren’t trained or equipped to carry out covert surveillance operations.

In a word, Erik Muller thought sourly as he watched from the station manager’s second-floor office, the security troops were useless. He adjusted the office’s venetian blinds again, opening them a fraction more to get a better view of the main station concourse below.

The sight of the swirling crowds brought a scowl to his narrow face. The six agents he’d posted around the concourse were going to have a damned hard time keeping the drop point in view. He lifted the field glasses hanging from his neck and focused them on the trash bin near a central pillar.

The papers were still there, stuffed awkwardly between the bin and pillar-held together only by a thin rubber band. Something that bitch who’d called him had insisted on as a precaution against hidden explosives or tracking devices.

Muller swore as a sudden surge of black day laborers heading for an arriving train blocked his view of the drop point. He lowered his field glasses, impatiently waiting for the small mob to pass by.

When he looked again, the papers were gone. For an instant, Muller stiffened in shock. Then he whirled, looking for the black workers who’d just swarmed past the drop point. They were several meters farther on, pushing their way through the milling crowds to clamber aboard the closest train. Muller swore again. Every one of the blacks was carrying a lunch pail or shopping bag of some kind-perfect for concealing documents. As he watched, they mingled with a throng of white commuters moving in the opposite direction.

Muller dropped his field glasses and reached for the walkie talkie hooked to his belt.

“Captain, order your men to stop

those blacks trying to board at Platform Two! Stop them and search them for stolen state security papers!”

Shrill whistles tore through the air and boots slammed rhythmically on the train station’s concrete floor as a platoon of heavily armed soldiers jogged forward through the crowds and deployed along the edge of the platform. In seconds, they were in position-patting down men and women alike and poking rifles into bags and lunch pails with brisk, impersonal efficiency.

Muller allowed himself a brief, humorless smile. So there were blacks involved in this little conspiracy, eh? So much the better. He knew how to extract information from blacks. A half hour’s work in a well-equipped interrogation center should give him the names of the other plotters. And with luck, he’d have them all swept away into oblivion before they had a chance to post that damning videotape.

But his smile faded as the search went on and on without any sign of success.

Two people passed through the station’s sliding doors and emerged, blinking, into the lateafternoon sunlight. The first, a stylishly dressed young white woman, carried only a gleaming leather briefcase. The thin, young black man following five paces behind her strained under a heavy load-the bags and boxes that seemed to represent the fruits of a day-long shopping expedition.

The woman glanced back once at the station and then strode confidently across Joubert Street to the parked car waiting for her-a battered Ford

Escort. The black chauffeur hurried ahead to open the rear door for her.

She slid gracefully into the backseat and kissed the man already there.

Ian Sheffield gently disentangled himself and asked, “Well, did you get them?”

Emily van der Heijden smiled happily and pulled the sheaf of papers out of her brand-new briefcase. They had the last piece of the puzzle they needed.

Muller and his master, Karl Vorster, were about to be exposed as men who’d betrayed their sacred oaths and their own people in a quest for power and position.

NETWORK STUDIOS, JOHANNESBURG

Ian finished his photocopying and laid the last sheet of paper to one side.

“All set.”

Emily looked up from her reading. She pushed a loose strand of hair away from her eyes and shook her head slowly from side to side.

“My God, even though I had some idea of what to expect, I still can’t believe it! They knew everything that would happen. The time. The place. Even the weapons and coded signals that would be used. Everything!”

Ian nodded grimly and slid his copies into a manila folder along with a videocassette.

“Your recorded narration?” Emily pointed to the tape.

He nodded again.

“Yeah. It’s just a rough cut. Sam was going to…”

He faltered briefly before continuing, “Sam was going to do the final editing, but I’ll have to leave that up to the guys in New York instead.”

He shrugged into his jacket and picked up the manila folder.

I thought I’d better drop this off at the embassy so my friend there can send it out in tomorrow’s diplomatic bag.” He reached over for one of the two remaining tapes showing Muller’s Sun City encounter.

“I’ll leave this for that bastard to find at the same time.”

Emily narrowed her eyes.

“Why give it to him at all? He murdered Sam and he would have murdered us if he’d had the chance.”

Ian sighed “I know. But we made a deal … and a deal’s a deal, even if you’re trading with the devil himself.” He waggled the tape.

“Besides, we’ve got what we wanted. And I’ll be damned if I ever stoop low enough to really use something like this against anyone for real-even someone like that son of a bitch Muller.”

Emily didn’t say anything more as he leaned forward, kissed her, and left on his errands. Instead she sat quietly, thinking furiously. Ian was a good man. Too good, perhaps. His sense of honor wouldn’t let him seek revenge against Erik Muller-not even after the man had killed his best friend. She wiped away tears that rose unbidden as she remembered Sam

Knowles’s always cheerful, ever-irreverent face.

At last, Emily shook her head and picked up the last remaining copy of the videotape. She couldn’t let Muller’s treachery pass unpunished.

She opened the phone book. Another of Johannesburg’s many messenger services would soon be delivering a sealed package to the Ministry of

Law and Order.