Vortex

CHAPTER 1 Glimmering

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.

That was when Ian had screwed up. Prompted by the moderator, he’d practically sunk his teeth in the anchor-citing case after case when the man’s own well-known political opinions had shown up in the way stories were reported. It had been an effective performance, one that earned him a rousing ovation from the studio audience and a withering glare from the anchor,

He hadn’t thought any more about it for weeks. Not until his promised promotion to Capitol Hill vanished, replaced by a sudden assignment as a foreign correspondent based in Cape Town.

That was when he realized just how badly he’d pissed off the network brass. South Africa was widely regarded as a graveyard for ambitious journalists. When the country was quiet, you didn’t have anything to report. And when things heated up, the South African security services often clamped down-making it almost impossible to get any dramatic footage out of the country. Even worse, the current government seemed to be following a policy of unusual restraint. That meant no pictures of police whipping anti apartheid demonstrators or firing shotguns at black labor-union activists. The result: practically zero airtime for reporters trying to work in South Africa. And airtime, the number of minutes or seconds you occupied on America’s television screens, was the scale on which TV reporters were judged.

Ian knew how far he’d slipped on that scale. Since arriving in Cape Town nearly six months ago, he’d filed dozens of stories over the satellite links to New York. And he’d shown up in America’s living rooms for a grand total of precisely four minutes and twenty-three seconds. That was oblivion, TV-style.

“Hey, Sheffield! You alive in there, boyo? You ready to go?”

Ian looked up, startled out of his depressing reverie by Knowles’s voice.

With pieces of camera gear and sound equipment strapped to his back or dangling from both hands, his technician looked more like a pack mule than a man.

“Ready and willing, though not very able, Sam.” Ian reached over and plucked a couple of carrying cases out of Knowles’s overloaded hands.

“Let me take those. I might need you without a hernia sometime.”

The two men started walking back to their car, a dented Ford station wagon. It had been another wasted trip on another wasted day. Ian moodily kicked a piece of loose gravel out of his path, sending it skittering down the avenue past the highly polished shoes of an unsmiling, gray-jacketed policeman.

“Oh, shit,” Knowles muttered under his breath.

The policeman stared coldly at the two Americans as they came closet and held out his left hand.

“Papers!”

Both Ian and his cameraman awkwardly set their gear down and fished through crowded pockets for passports and work permits. Then they stood waiting as the South African idly leafed through their documents, a sneer plastered across his narrow face.

At last he looked up at them.

“You are journalists’?”

Ian could hear the contempt in the man’s voice and felt his own temper rising. He kept his words clipped.

“That’s right. American journalists.

Is there some kind of problem?”

The policeman glared at him for several seconds.

“No, Meneer Sheffield, there is no problem. You are free to go. For the moment. But I suggest you show more respect in the future.”

Ian reached for their passports and permits and saw them flutter to the ground as the South African let them fall beyond his fingers. Months of petty slights and mounting frustration came to a boil in a single instant. For a split second he saw the policeman’s body as a succession of targets. First the solar plexus. Next that arrogant, perfectly shaped nose. Ian’s hands curled, ready to strike. He’d demonstrate what he’d learned in two years of self-defense classes back in the States.

Then he noticed a triumphant gleam in the other man’s eyes. Strange.

Why’d he look so happy? Rational thought returned, overriding anger. The bastard wanted to provoke a fight. And granting him his wish would mean trouble. Big trouble.

Instead, Ian knelt without a word and picked up their scattered papers.

Getting deported was not the way he wanted to leave this country.

As they unlocked the station wagon, Knowles risked a glance back over his shoulder.

“That son of a bitch is still watching us. “

Without looking, Ian slid behind the Fiesta’s wheel.

“Penis envy, probably. “

His cameraman laughed softly and shut the door.

“Cheer up, Ian. If the government ever lets thugs like Little Boy

Nazi there oft’ the leash again, you’ll have plenty of blood and gore to report on.”

As he pulled away from the curb, Ian studied the rigid, uniformed figure still staring after them. Knowles might just be right. For some reason that didn’t make him feel much better.

MAY 29-THE MINISTRY OF LAW AND ORDER, PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA

Karl Vorster’s private office matched his personality. A scarred hardwood floor and plain white walls uncluttered by portraits or pictures enclosed a small room empty except for a desk and a single chair. The low background hum of a ventilating system marked Vorster’s sole apparent concession to the modern age.

It was a concession he made unwillingly, because, like many Afrikaners,

Karl Vorster preferred the past. A myth filled past of constant sacrifice, hardship, and heroic death that colored every part of his life.

Three hundred years before, his ancestors had braved the terrible dangers of the sea to settle on Africa’s southernmost point, the Cape of Good

Hope-enticed from their native Holland with thousands of others by an offer of free farmland. Over the next decades, they’d conquered the local tribes while carving vast homesteads out of the arid wilderness. These cattle farmers, or Boers, saw themselves as direct spiritual descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs, leading their flocks and followers to better lands under God’s good guidance.

Nearly a century and a half later, the Vorster clan joined the Great Trek outward from the Cape. They drove their cattle and their servants first into Natal and then over the Drakensberg Mountains to the high open lands of the Transvaal, determined to escape both British colonial rule and interfering abolitionist missionaries.

God granted them victory over the warlike Zulus, but He did not shelter them from the British, always just a step behind. It wasn’t long before

London’s colonial administrators and soldiers cast their covetous eyes northward, toward the rich gold mines of the Afrikaner-ruled Transvaal.

When war broke out at the dawn of the twentieth century, Vorster’s grandfather fought as a member of the local commandos riding rings round the British troops occupying his conquer cd land. After leading a series of daring raids he’d finally been captured and executed. His wife, penned in a British “concentration camp,” died of typhoid fever and starvation, along with twenty-six thousand other Afrikaner women and children.

Vorster’s father, a dominie in the Dutch Reformed Church, never forgot or forgave the British. And when the Second World War broke out, the dominie joined the tens of thousands of Afrikaners who’d both prayed openly and acted secretly for a Nazi victory. Disappointed by Germany’s defeat, he’d gloried in the 1948 election victory that brought the

Afrikaner-dominated National Party to power and made apartheid the law of the land.

The dominie gave his only son three imperishable inheritances: an abiding contempt for the English and other Uitlanders, or foreigners; a firm conviction that God ordained the separation of the races; and an unyielding commitment to the preservation of Afrikaner power and purity.

Those were beliefs Karl Vorster had never abandoned in his own rise to power and position. And now he stood high within the ranks of South

Africa’s ruling elite.

The minister of law and order closed the file folder in front of him, nodded slowly in satisfaction, and let the trace of a smile appear on his harsh, square-jawed face.

“Good work, Muller. This little raid you dreamed up has put the fear of God into kaffirs across the continent. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for us.”

“Thank you, Minister.” Erik Muller relaxed slightly, though he kept his lean, wasp-wasted frame at attention. Vorster insisted that his subordinates show what he considered proper deferencc-something Muller never forgot.

“I had feared that the President might be somewhat unhappy with our actions. “

Vorster snorted.

“Happy or unhappy, it doesn’t matter. Haymans doesn’t have the votes to touch me. Not in the cabinet and not among the

Broeders. What does matter is that we’ve scotched this foolish idea of talks with a bunch of lying blacks. That’s what counts.” He thumped his desk for emphasis.

“Yes, Minister.” Muller’s right foot brushed against the briefcase he’d brought into Vorster’s inner office. Sudden excitement at the thought of what it contained made him sound breathless.

“And of course we also obtained a fascinating piece of intelligence from the Gawamba safe house.”

Vorster looked more carefully at his director of military intelligence.

The Directorate of Military Intelligence, the DMI, was responsible for strategic intelligence-gathering including data on the black guerrilla movements warring on South Africa. A cabinet reshuffle had long since brought many of its day-to-day operations under Vorster’s authority, and in that time he’d come to trust Erik Muller’s calm, cold professionalism.

But now the expression on the man’s face reminded him of a cat come face-to-face with an extra large saucer of cream.

“Go on.”

“You’ve seen the list of documents Bekker’s team copied?”

Vorster nodded. When he’d read the DMI report, he’d simply skimmed the page-long compilation of ANC personnel rosters, equipment lists, code words, and the like. Nothing on it had struck him as being especially interesting or significant.

Muller laid his briefcase on the desk and unlocked it.

“Not everything they found went on that list, Minister. I kept a particular group of documents separate. “

He handed Vorster a sheaf of papers.

“These refer to an upcoming special

ANC operation. Something they’ve called Broken Covenant.”

He stood silently as Vorster thumbed through the papers, watching with interest as the older man’s face darkened with rage.

“God in heaven, Muller! These damned blacks are growing

too bold by far. ” Vorster’s calloused hands tightened, crumpling the documents he still held. He stared at his subordinate.

“Could such a monstrous thing really be done?”

Muller nodded slowly.

“I believe so, Minister. Especially without extraordinary security precautions on our part. It’s actually quite a workable plan.” He sounded almost admiring.

Vorster scowled.

“And what’s being done to kill this thing in its cradle?” He pointed to the papers in front of him.

“Nothing… as yet, Minister.”

Vorster’s scowl grew deeper.

“Explain yourself, Meneer Muller. Tell me why you’ve ignored such a serious threat to this government!”

Muller’s pale blue eyes stayed fixed on his superior.

“I’ve referred this matter to you, Minister, because it occurred to me that it might serve a number of political purposes. I thought you might want to personally inform the President of this plan’s existence. After all, nothing could more clearly demonstrate the foolishness of trying to negotiate with our enemies. “

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Vorster’s scowl faded into another thin-lipped smile.

“I see. Yes, I do see.”

The younger man was absolutely right. A majority of his cabinet colleagues seemed blindly determined to quiet the current round of racial unrest with words. Words! What idiocy! Vorster knew that blacks respected only one thing power The power of the whip and the gun. That was the only real way for true Afrikaners to maintain their baasskap, their mastery, over the nonwhite races of South Africa. How else could 4.5 million whites avoid being submerged by the 24 million others they ruled? Too many in Pretoria and Cape Town had forgotten those numbers in this hateful rush toward “moderation. “

As Muller said, it was time to remind them.

Vorster eyed his subordinate. The man’s instincts were good, but his arrogance was an irritation. The Scriptures were clear. Sinful pride opened a doorway for Satan’s whispers. Perhaps Muller needed a small taste of the lash himself. Not much. Just enough to keep his mind focused on his true master.

With short, powerful strokes he began smoothing the documents he’d crushed.

“Very clever, Muller. Not too clever for your own good, I hope?”

Muller stiffened.

“No, Minister. But I am loyal… loyal to you and to our cause!”

Vorster’s smile widened, though it never reached his eyes.

“Of course you are. I’ve never doubted it.” He folded the captured plans for Broken

Covenant and slid them into a drawer.

“Haymans has called a special cabinet meeting in Cape Town to discuss our current foreign policy. Maybe

I’ll use this little present you’ve brought to me to set the right tone for the discussion tomorrow.

“In the meantime, Muller, I want this matter held strictly between the two of us. Understood?”

Muller nodded.

“You have the only printed copy of the material, Minister.

And the negatives are locked in my safe.”

“Has anyone else seen this?”

“Just the technician who developed the film. I’ve already sworn him to secrecy.” Muller arched a single finely sculpted eyebrow. “in any event,

Minister, I’m certain he can be trusted. He is one of our ‘friends.”

“

Vorster knew exactly what Muller meant by “friends. ” He meant the

Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. The AWB existed to assure South Africa’s continued domination by an all-white and “pure” Afrikaner power structure. Its publicly known leaders organized mass political rallies of gun-toting fanatics and maintained a brown shirt paramilitary group known as the Brandwag, or Sentry. They preached a gospel combining both militant nationalism and virulent hatred for those they saw as dangerous “aliens” in South Africa-blacks, Indians, mixed-race coloreds, Jews, and even Englishdescended whites. And though the ruling National Party dismissed the AWB as a lunatic fringe group, its members~ ip continued to climb steadily. In fact, every gesture madu by the National Party toward political and racial moderation boosted the

AWB’s strength.

Few, if any, knew that the AWB maintained another, more ominous organization-an organization whose members were scattered secretly throughout South Africa’s political and military elite. None attended the

AWB’s rallies or appeared on its voter lists. but all were committed to its vision of a divinely inspired, white-ruled state. Most remained ostensible members of the National Party and even the Broederbond-itself a vast, intensely secretive organization of the Afrikaner power structure.

So the world looked at South Africa and saw it ruled by the National

Party. In turn, those inside South Africa looked at the National Party and saw it guided by the shadowy hand of the Broederbond. And hidden deep within the Broederbond lay a hard core of men loyal only to the AWB and to Karl Vorster-their true leader.

After Muller left, Vorster sat silently, contemplating the opportunity given him by God and Capt. Rolf Bekker.

MAY 30-CABINET ROOM, THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH

AFRICA

Frederick Haymans, state president and prime minister of the Republic of

South Africa, stared angrily across the council table at his minister of law and order.

Vorster hadn’t been his choice for the post. He’d been forced on Haymans by the National Party’s conservative wing, a group anxious to make sure that security policy remained in what it considered more trustworthy hands. Since then, he’d proved a constant thorn in the President’s side first by quarreling with established policies and now by outfight sabotage of those same policies.

“This little Zimbabwean adventure of yours has cost us damned dearly,

Vorster! I find it hard to believe that even you could act so stupidly.”

Heads nodded in agreement around the table. Few of Vorster’s colleagues liked or trusted him. And none saw any advantage in contradicting their president and party leader.

Vorster purpled.

“That’s nonsense and you know it! We haven’t lost anything of real value. In fact, we captured’ Nothing of value?” Haymans cut him off.

“Months of painstaking negotiations are about to go down the drain and you still say that! We need these talks with the ANC and the other black groups. And we need continued good relations with our neighbors.”

“More nonsense!” Vorster’s fist crashed onto the table.

“These talks you are so fond of citing have produced nothing but hot air and trouble. Why, the ANC’s terrorists even flaunt their weapons, jeering openly at our police. I tell you, we should never have allowed that collection of half-witted, bareassed, communist thugs out of prison!

“And as for Zimbabwe and the others… hah!” He dismissed the rest of

Haymans’s argument with a contemptuous wave of his hand.

“The socalled front line states have nothing we want and nothing we need. If we show continued strength, they will come begging to us-just as they always have!”

Silence greeted his tirade, a silence broken by the foreign minister.

“It’s quite true that the negotiations themselves have produced little of concrete value-“

“So, you admit I’m fight!” Vorster snapped “No.” The foreign minister’s irritation showed plainly on an urbane face normally able to hide strong emotion.

“These talks with the ANC’s and other black leaders have tremendous symbolic value-both for blacks here and for the financial superpowers abroad. They demonstrate our intent to continue making needed reforms. And to be blunt, gentlemen, we must show further progress soon if we’re to keep our economy afloat. “

Others in the Cabinet Room muttered their agreement. South Africa’s inflation rate, unemployment rolls, and budget deficit were all rising at an alarming rate. Anyone with open eyes could see the prospect of impending economic collapse. The underlying and interwoven causes of this imminent disaster were equally clear.

Fed up with continued economic exploitation and white political domination, the nation’s black-led labor unions had

initiated a rolling series of crippling and costly strikes. At the same time, continuing conflicts with its neighbors forced South Africa to keep a large number of its reservist Citizen Force troops on active duty-draining both the civilian economy and the government’s treasury.

Even worse, the world’s banks and moneylenders, wary of entanglement with an unstable, oppressive regime, were increasingly unwilling to pour needed capital into the Republic of South Africa.

Faced with this situation on taking office, Haymans and his colleagues had implemented a modest series of reforms. They’d dismantled many of the last vestiges of “petty” apartheid in cities across South Africa-policies that had banned interracial marriages, restricted black movement, and vigorously maintained “whites only” beaches, restaurants, buses, and parks. They’d moved to improve relations with neighboring states. They’d even freed captive ANC leaders and un banned organizations they’d once labeled “terrorist. ” And all these reforms had been capped by talks aimed at finding some acceptable form of political power-sharing with the country’s black majority.

Haymans’s reforms had shown signs of paying off. Some labor unions had come back to the bargaining table. Hostile press coverage had faded away.

Overseas investors had seemed more willing to provide affordable capital for major construction and development projects. And leaders from other countries across Africa had readily agreed to meet South Africa’s new president.

Now everything they’d accomplished seemed at risk, thanks largely to

Vorster’s bloodthirsty clumsiness.

As the others argued, Haymans shook his head wearily. He had to find a way to repair the damage done by the raid on Gawamba. He had to make concessions that would salvage his negotiations with the country’s black leaders. Concessions that would dominate the world’s newspapers and television broadcasts. Concessions that could provide a cloak of respectability for those willing to meet South Africa halfway.

He looked up and met the foreign minister’s steady gaze. They’d already discussed what must be done. They would have to accept publicly the inevitability of some form of “one man, one vote” government for South Africa. They would also have to accept the ANC’s demands for a thorough overhaul of the security services and an impartial investigation of past police activities and practices. Neither man especially liked either prospect, but neither could think of any reasonable alternatives.

“Gentlemen!” Haymans interrupted a fierce exchange between two men who were ordinarily close friends. Quiet settled over the crowded Cabinet

Room. He noticed Vorster’s rough-hewn face tighten into an expressionless mask.

“This bickering won’t get us anywhere. We haven’t time for it.” He paused.

“One thing is very clear-clear to me at least. And that is the need for dramatic action if we’re to make further progress. “

His allies nodded their agreement. Those few who’d sided with Vorster sat motionless with folded arms and dour looks.

Haymans pressed on.

“Therefore I propose that we publicly announce our willingness to accept two of the African National Congress’s latest proposals. Specifically, those concerning eventual majority rule and immediate restrictions on the security services.” He stared Vorster right in the eye as he went on.

“In addition, I intend to honor their request for a new and more open-minded inquiry into alleged police brutality. “

Shocked murmuring broke out around the table, quiet noises of astonishment suddenly drowned out by Vorster’s thundering, outraged voice.

“Treason! What you propose is treason, Hayinans!”

Other cabinet ministers joined the fray, most shouting Vorster down.

“Silence!” Haymans rose out of his chair.

“I will have order in this meeting!”

As the shouting died away, he sat back.

“That’s better. Remember, we are leaders-not some group of hooligan schoolboys. “All the more reason why we should defeat these lunatic ideas of yours,

Haymans.” Vorster’s powerful hands closed around the edge of the conference table as he fought for selfcontrol.

“The ANC is nothing more than a communist front,

a cadre of self-proclaimed terrorists and murderers. We should kill them, not kneel in surrender to them!”

Haymans ignored his redfaced minister of law and order, focusing his rhetoric instead on the other men crowded around the table. ” I do not suggest that we surrender unconditionally to these people, gentlemen.

That would be lunacy.”

Vorster started to speak, but Haymans’s calmer, more measured tones rode over his angry words.

“But we must be seen to be reasonable, my friends.

The Gawamba disaster has cost us dearly. We must try everything in our power to retrieve the situation. If these talks fail, the world must blame the ANC’s intransigence-not ours. On the other hand, continued discussions will bring obvious benefits.”

He ticked them off one at a time.

“Reduced tensions both externally and internally. More overseas credit. Lower military expenditures. And the hope that we can move the ANC away from its ridiculous insistence on a strict system of majority rule. “

Most of the others around the table again nodded their agreement, though many with obvious reluctance.

“I don’t see this proposal as a panacea for all our troubles, gentlemen.”

Haymans shook his head slowly.

“Far from it. But I do believe that it is a necessary political move at this point in our history. We can no longer survive by the simpleminded use of military power. Instead, we must continue the search for a compromise that protects both our people and the peace,”

He noticed Vorster’s face change as he spoke. The look of barely suppressed rage vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating stare.

“Will you allow us to fully debate this proposal?” Vorster’s tone was surprisingly formal-almost as if he no longer cared whether he won or lost.

“Time is too short, Minister. ” Haymans matched Vorster’s formality.

“We must act soon if we are to save these vital negotiations, and I believe we’ve already fully explored all the relevant issues.”

I I I see. “

Haymans could scarcely hide his astonishment. Vorster giving up, almost without a right? It seemed so out of character. Still, the President had learned long ago never to waste opportunities given him by opponents. He leaned forward.

“Then, gentlemen, we can bring this matter to a vote. Naturally, I expect your support for my proposal.”

Haymans watched the quick show of hands calmly, confident of the final tally. With the exception of Karl Vorster and two or three others, all those around the table owed their current positions and power to Haymans and his National Party faction. All were wise enough to avoid unnecessary political suicide.

Haymans smiled.

“Excellent, my friends. We’ll make the announcement tomorrow, after we have had time to contact the ANC and the other black groups.” He avoided Vorster’s unwavering gaze.

“If there’s nothing further to discuss, we’ll adjourn this meeting.”

No one spoke.

Ten minutes later, Karl Vorster strode out the front doors of the

Parliament building and climbed into a waiting black limousine. His unopened briefcase still held the captured ANC operations plan called

Broken Covenant.

MAY 30-IN THE HEX RIVER MOUNTAINS, SOUTH AFRICA

Riaan Oost’s three-room cottage lay deep amid the sharp edged mountains of the Hex River range. Forty acres’ worth of grapevines climbed the steep hillsides above his cottage -vines that Oost and his wife tended for their absentee landlord. Six years of hard, unremitting labor had brought the vines to the point at which they would soon produce some of the world’s finest wine grapes.

But Riaan Oost’s need to work ceased at nightfall, ending as shadows thrown by the Hex River Mountains erased all light in the narrow valley.

Now he sat quietly in the front room of his small home, reading by the dim light thrown by a single electric lamp. When the phone rang, it caught him by surprise. He cast his

book aside and answered on the third shrill ring, “Oost here. Who’s calling?”

“Oost, dye say? I’m sorry. I’m trying to reach Piet Uys. Isn’t this oh five three one, one nine three six five?” The caller’s crisp, businesslike voice sent chills up Oost’s spine.

He spoke the words he’d memorized months before.

“No, it isn’t. This is oh five three one, one nine three six eight. You must have the wrong number.”

The telephone line clicked and then buzzed as the caller hung up.

Oost followed suit and turned to face his wife. She stared worriedly up at him from her needlework.

“Who was it, Riaan? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” He swallowed, feeling the first surge of excitement pounding through his veins. It had been a long wait.

“It was them, Marta.

They’ve put things in gear.”

She nodded slowly, knowing that the moment she’d both prayed for and dreaded had come at last.

“You’ll be needing help, then?”

He shook his head.

“No. I’ll do all the moving myself. Less chance of trouble that way. You stay here and tell anyone who calls that I’ve gone to bed… that I’m feeling a bit under the weather. Can you do that for me?” He was already pulling on his jacket.

“Of course, darling.” She clasped her hands together.

“But you will be very, very careful, won’t you?”

Riaan Oost paused by the door, a sardonic smile on his face.

“Don’t worry, Marta. If anybody stops me, I’m just the simple colored boy running errands for his master. They’ll never think to look closely at what I’m carrying.” He blew her a kiss and went outside toward the too] shed attached to his cottage.

The ANC had recruited Riaan Oost more than ten years before. At the time, he’d been a student studying agronomy at the University of Cape Town.

He’d been unusual even then-one of the few hundred mixed-race youths permitted an education beside their white superiors. He’d also displayed a quiet, unwavering determination to learn, a determination that masked his fierce resentment of apartheid and the whole

Afrikaner-dominated system.

The ANC cell leader who’d spotted Oost had insisted that he spurn any contact with the student-run anti apartheid movement. And he’d obeyed, heeding the cell leader’s promise of a larger, more important role in later years.

Untainted by a public connection with dissidents and unsuspected by the security forces, Oost graduated with distinction. He’d married and moved to the western Cape, trapped in the only job open to a colored man of his talents and education~-tenant farmer for a loudmouthed, boorish

Afrikaner.

Oost smiled grimly to himself as he unlocked the shed door. Yes, it had been a long, painful wait. But now the waiting was almost over.

He pulled a rack of tools away from the shed’s back wall and knelt to examine the crates and boxes he’d uncovered. All of them seemed intact.

Just as they had on delivery six months before.

With a muffled groan, he heaved the first crate into his arms and staggered outside toward his battered old pickup. Grenade launchers, automatic rifles, and explosives weighed more than wooden vine stakes and baskets of fresh-picked grapes.

Half an hour later, Riaan Oost backed his overloaded truck carefully out onto the dirt track winding down his valley. He saw his wife standing sadly at the window, waved, and drove off into the surrounding darkness.

Broken Covenant’s first phase was under way.