Vortex

CHAPTER 2 Staging

JUNE I -THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

When the last camera light winked out, the temperature in the packed briefing room began falling-dropping slowly from an almost unbearable level of heat and humidity normally found only in Turkish steam baths. Around the room, reporters from across the globe swapped rumors, gossip, and friendly insults, fighting to be heard above a hive like buzz of frenzied conversation. It was the usual end to a very unusual South African government press conference.

Ian Sheffield smiled in satisfaction as he closed his notebook and watched

Knowles pack away their gear. He’d finally been given a story bound to play on the air back in the States. Haymans’s willingness to accept the possibility of majority rule and an in-depth, independent investigation of the security services was news all right, big news-no matter how genuine the offer was, or whether anything of substance ever came of it.

Knowing the Afrikaner mentality, Ian doubted that anything really would.

Even the most moderate National Party member could never contemplate surrendering all vestiges of white domination over South Africa. And even the most reasonable ANC leader would never settle for anything less. It was a ready-made formula for failure. A failure that would generate more violence and more corpses strewn across the country’s streets.

The thought erased his smile.

South Africa’s story had all the elements of a grand tragedy-missed opportunities, misunderstandings, hatred, arrogance, greed, and fear. The worst part was that it seemed a never-ending tragedy, a problem completely beyond human solution.

Ian sighed, reminding himself that whatever happened would make news for him to report. He’d learned early on not to get too involved in the events he covered. It was the first lesson drummed into every would-be journalist’s skull. Staying detached was the only way to stay objective and sane. Once your personal opinions and attitudes started governing the way you reported a story, you were well on the way to becoming just an unpaid propagandist for one side or the other.

Knowles tapped his shoulder.

“Hadn’t you better get going? I thought you had lunch plans today.”

Yikes. Ian glanced at his watch. Somewhere in the middle of Haymans’s press conference he’d completely lost track of the time.

“I did… I mean, I do.”

But now he and Knowles had too much work to finish before their daily transmission window opened on the network communications satellite. He’d have to call Emily and cancel. And she wouldn’t be very happy about that.

They’d been planning this afternoon’s excursion for more than a week.

Well, she’d understand, wouldn’t she? After all, this was the biggest story to come his way since he’d gotten to Cape Town. Knowles wouldn’t really need his help until later, but it still seemed wrong to simply vanish on one of South Africa’s rare “hot” news days. Damn. Talk about getting caught in a cross fire between your profession and your personal life. Emily

van der Heijden was the one good thing that had happened to him in South

Africa.

Knowles saw the look on his face and laughed.

“Look, boyo. You cut along to lunch. And by the time you’ve finished stuffing your face, I’ll have the whole tape edited, prepped, and ready to go. “

“Thanks, Sam-I owe you one.” Ian paused, calculating how much time he’d need.

“Listen, the window opens at six, right’? Well, I probably won’t be back until four or so to do the voice-over, wrap-up, and sign-off. Is that still okay by you?”

Knowles’s fight eyebrow rose.

“Oh… it’s one of those kind of lunch dates.”

Ian was surprised to find himself embarrassed. If any other woman but Emily were involved, he’d simply have grinned and let Knowles’s lurid imagination run wild. Hell, if he were still back in the States, Knowles wouldn’t have been that far off base. But something about Emily was different. Something about tier summoned up all the old-fashioned protective instincts so scorned by ardent feminists.

Ian shook his head irritably.

“Sony to disappoint you, Sam. We don’t have anything really sordid on tap for today. Just lunch and a quick jaunt up the Table Mountain cableway for the view. “

“Sounds great.” Knowles must have heard the bite in his voice because he changed the subject fast.

“You still want me to keep that slow pan across the cabinet while Haymans’s making his statement?”

“Yeah.” Ian nodded toward the dais behind the speaker’s podium. Technicians were still swarming around the podium itself, jostling each other as they unclipped microphones and coiled lengths of tangled wiring.

“I want that shot in because one of his cabinet ministers was missing. Somebody important, too. Somebody who obviously isn’t much interested in showing a united front on this talks thing.”

Knowles smiled broadly.

“Let me guess. That well-known friend of the international press and all-around humanitarian, the minister of law and order. Am I right?”

“You get an A for today, Sam.” Ian matched his smile.

“Can you dig up some good, juicy file footage of Vorster for me? Something suitably ominous. You know, shots of him glowering in the back of a long black limousine. Or surrounded by armed security troops. That kind of stuff.”

He waited while Knowles jotted down a quick note and went on, “Then we can weave those pictures in at the wrapupKnowles finished the sentence for him.

“Thus leaving our viewers with the unpleasant, but real, impression that these talks aren’t necessarily going to lead straight to the promised land of peace. “

“Right again.” Ian clapped his cameraman on the, shoulder.

“Keep this up and I’ll think you’re after my job.”

Knowles made a face.

“No thanks. You’re the on-air ‘talent.” I prefer being an unknown gofer. You can keep all the headaches of dealing with the network brass for yourself. All I ask is the chance to shoot some interesting film without too much interference. “

Ian shrugged and turned to leave.

“You may get your wish. I’ve got a feeling that this country’s finally coming out of hibernation. “

KEPPEL HOUSE, CAPE TOWN

Every table in the small dining room was occupied-each fit by a single, flickering candle. Voices rose and fell around the darkened room, the harsh, clipped accents of Afrikaans mingling with half a dozen variants of English. White-coated, dark-skinned waiters bustled through the crowd, hands full of trays loaded down with steaming platters of fresh seafood or beef. Mouth-watering aromas rose from every platter, making it easy to understand why Keppel House never lacked customers.

But Ian Sheffield had scarcely tasted the food he’d eaten or the wine he’d sipped. He didn’t even notice the other diners filling the room.

Instead, his eyes were firmly fixed on the

woman seated directly across the table. He was sure that he’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

Emily van der Heijden looked up from her wineglass and smiled at him-a smile that stretched all the way from her wide, generous mouth to her bright blue eyes. She set her glass down and delicately brushed a strand of shoulder-length, sun-brightened auburn hair back from her face.

“You are staring again, Ian. Are my table manners really so horrible?”

Her eyes twinkled mischievously, taking the sting out of her words.

He laughed.

“You know they’re perfect. You ought to emigrate to the UK.

I bet you’d have no trouble finding a teaching job at some private school for wealthy young ladies. “

“How ghastly!” Emily wrinkled her nose in mock disgust. It was just barely too long for her face, adding the touch of imperfection needed to make her beauty human.

“How could I think of abandoning my fine career here in order to teach spoiled young English girls which fork to use?”

Ian sensed the faint trace of bitterness in her voice and mentally kicked himself. He should have known better than to let the conversation wander anywhere near the working world. It wasn’t something she enjoyed talking or thinking about.

Emily was rare among Afrikaner women. Born into an old line established

Transvaal family, she should have grown up ready to take her place as a dutiful, compliant housewife. That hadn’t happened, Even as a little girl, Emily had known that she would rather write than cook, and that she preferred politics to sewing. Her police official father, widowed at an early age, had found it impossible to instill more “womanly” interests.

So, instead of marrying as her father wished, she’d stayed in school and earned a journalism degree. And four years of -life on the University of

Witwatersrand’s freethinking campus had pulled her even further away from her father’s hard-core pro-apartheid views. Politics became something else for them to fight about.

Degree in hand, she’d gone looking for a job. But once outside the sheltered confines of the academic world, she’d learned the hard way that most South African employers still felt women should work only at home or in the typing pool.

Unable to find a newspaper that would hire her and unwilling to admit defeat to her father, she’d been forced to sign on with one of Cape

Town’s English-speaking law firms-as a secretary. The job paid her rent and gave her a chance to practice her English, and she hated every minute of it.

Emily saw Ian’s face fall and reached out, gently stroking his hand.

“You mustn’t mind my moods, Ian. I warned you about them, didn’t P They are my curse.”

She smiled again.

“There! You see! I am happy again. As I always am when you are near.”

Ian fought to hide a smile of his own. Somehow Emily could get away with romantic cliche ds that would have made any other woman he’d ever known burst out laughing.

“I thought for sure that you would not come today when I heard the news of the PI-esident’s press conference. How could you stand to leave such an exciting story as this?” Emily’s eyes were alight with excitement. She tended to look at his career with an odd mix of idealistic innocence and muted envy.

“Easily. I wouldn’t dream of abandoning lunch with a beautiful, intoxicating woman like yourself.”

She slapped his hand lightly.

“What nonsense! You are such a liar.

“Really, Ian, don’t you think the news is wonderful? Haymans and the others may finally be coming to their senses. Surely even the verkramptes can see the need for reform?” Emily used the Afrikaans word meaning “reactionaries.”

Ian shrugged.

“Maybe. I’ll believe the millennium’s arrived when I see people like that guy Vorster or those AWB fanatics shedding real tears over Steve Biko’s grave. Until then it’s all just PR “

Emily nodded somberly.

“I suppose you are right. Words must be backed by deeds to become real.” She shook her

head impatiently.

“And meanwhile what are we doing? Sitting here wasting a beautiful day with all this talk of politicians. Surely that is foolishness!”

Ian smiled at her, turned, and signaled for the check.

Emily’s tiny, two-room flat occupied half the top floor of a whitewashed brick building just around the corner. In the year she’d lived there, she’d already made the flat distinctively her own. Bright wildflowers in scattered vases matched framed prints showing the rolling, open grasslands near her ancestral home in the northern Transvaal. An inexpensive personal computer occupied one corner of a handcrafted teak desk made for her great-grandfather more than a century before.

Ian sat restlessly on a small sofa, waiting as Emily rummaged through her closets looking for a coat to wear. He checked his watch and wondered again if this trip up the cableway was such a good idea. He was due back in the studio by four, and time was running out fast.

He resisted the temptation to get up and pace. Sam Knowles was going to be plenty pissed off if he missed his self-appointed deadline…. “Could you come here for a moment? I want your opinion on how I look in this.” Emily’s clear, happy voice broke in on his thoughts.

Ian swallowed a mild curse and rose awkwardly to his feet. God, they were already running late. Was she going to Put on a fashion show before going out in public?

He walked to the open bedroom doorway and stopped dead.

Emily hadn’t been putting a coat on-she’d been taking clothes off. She stood near the bed, clad only in a delicate lace bra and panties. Slowly, provocatively, she swiveled to face him, her arms held out.

“Well, what do you think?”

Ian felt a slow, lazy grin spread across his face as he stepped forward and took her in his arms. Her soft, full breasts pressed against his chest.

“I think that we aren’t going to make it to the mountain today.

“

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

“Oh, good. I hoped you would say that.”

He sank back, pulling her gently onto the bed.

“You know,” he said teasingly, “for a good Afrikaner girl, you’re becoming incredibly forward. I must be corrupting you. “

Emily shook her head slightly and Ian felt his skin tingle as her hair brushed against his face.

“That isn’t true, my darling. I am what I have really always been. Here in Cape Town I can be free, more my true self.”

He heard the small sadness in her words as she continued, “It is only when I am at home that I must act as nothing more than my father’s daughter.”

Ian rolled over, carrying her with him, still locked in his arms. He looked down into her shining, deep blue eyes.

“Then I’m very glad that you’re here with me instead.”

She arched her back and kissed him again, more fiercely this time.

Neither felt any further need to speak.

JUNE 3-NYANGA BLACK TOWNSHIP, NEAR CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Andrew Sebe stood quietly in line among his restless, uneasy neighbors, waiting for his turn to pass through the roadblock ahead. He felt his legs starting to tremble and fought for control. He couldn’t afford to show fear. Policemen could smell fear.

The line inched forward as a few more people were waved past the pair of open-topped Hippo armored personnel carriers blocking the road. Squads of policemen lounged to either side of the Hippos, eyes watchful beneath peaked caps. Some carried tear gas guns, others fondled long-handled whips, and several cradled shotguns. Helmeted crewmen stood ready behind water cannon mounted on the wheeled APCs.

Hundreds of men and women, a few in wrinkled suits or dresses, others in faded and stained coveralls, jammed the narrow streets running between

Nyanga Township’s ramshackle houses. All had missed their morning buses to Cape Town while policemen at the roadblock painstakingly checked identity cards and work permits. Now they were late for work and many would find their meager pay docked by

inconvenienced and irate employers. But they were all careful to conceal their anger. No matter which way the winds of reform blew in Pretoria and

Cape Town, the police still dealt harshly with suspected troublemakers.

The line inched forward again.

“You! Come here. ” One of the officers checking papers waved Andrew Sebe over.

Heart thudding, Sebe shuffled forward and handed the man his well-thumbed passbook and the forged work authorization he’d kept hidden for just this occasion.

He heard pages turning as the policeman flicked through his documents.

“You’re going to the du Plessis winery? Up in the Hex Rivierberge?”

“Yes, baas.” Sebe kept his eyes fixed on the ground and forced himself to speak in the respectful, almost worshipful tone he’d always despised.

“It’s past the harvest season. Why do they want you?”

Despite the cold early-morning air, Sebe felt sweat starting to soak his shirt. Oh, God. Could they know what he really was? He risked a quick glance at his interrogator and began to relax. The man didn’t seem suspicious, just curious.

“I don’t know for sure, baas. The Labour Exchange people just said they wanted a digger, that’s all.”

The policeman nodded abruptly and tossed his papers back.

“Right. Then you’d better get on your way, hadn’t you?”

Sebe folded his documents carefully and walked on, his mumbled thanks unheard as a South African Airways jumbo jet thundered low overhead on final approach to the airport barely a mile away.

The policeman watched through narrowed eyes as the young black man he’d questioned joined the other workers waiting at the bus stop. He left the roadblock and leaned in through the window of his unmarked car, reaching for the cellular phone hooked to its dashboard. With his eyes still fixed on Sebe, he dialed the special number he’d been given at a briefing the night before.

It was answered on the first ring.

“Yes?”

Something about the soft, urbane voice on the other end made the policeman uneasy. These cloak-and-dagger boys managed to make even the simplest words sound menacing. He raced through his report, eager to get off the line.

“This is Kriel front the Cape Town office. We’ve spotted one of those people on your list. Andrew Sebe, number fifteen. He’s just gone through our roadblock.”

“Did you give him any trouble?”

“No, Director. Your instructions were quite clear.”

“Good. Keep it that way. We’ll deal with this man ourselves, understood?”

“Yes, sir. “

In Pretoria one thousand miles to the north and east, Erik Muller hung up and sat slowly back in his chair, an ugly, thin-lipped smile on his handsome face. The first ANC operatives earmarked for Broken Covenant were on the move.

JUNE 8-UMKHONTO WT SIZWE HEADQUARTERS, LUSAKA, ZAMBIA

Col. Sese Luthuli stared out his office window, looking down at the busy streets of Lusaka. Minibuses, taxis, and bicycles competed for road space with thousands of milling pedestrians-street vendors, midday shoppers, and petty bureaucrats sauntering slowly back to work. All gave a wide berth to the patrols of camouflage-clad soldiers stationed along the length of

Independence Avenue, center of Zambia’s government offices and foreign embassies.

Umkhonto we Sizwe’s central headquarters also occupied one of the weathered concrete buildings lining Independence Avenue. Strong detachments of Zambian troops and armed ANC guerrillas guarded all entrances to the building, determined to prevent any repetition of the

Gawamba fiasco.

Luthuli scowled at the view. Though more than six hundred miles from

South Africa’s nearest border, Zambia was the closest black African nation willing to openly house the ANC’s ten-thousand-man-strong guerrilla force. Despite the ANC’s

reappearance as a legal force inside South Africa and the temporary cease-fire, the other front line states were still too cowed by Pretoria’s paratroops, artillery, and Mirage jet fighters to offer meaningful help. And without their aid, every ANC operation aimed at South Africa faced crippling logistical obstacles.

He heard a throat being cleared behind his back. His guest must be growing impatient.

“You know why I’m here, Comrade Luthuli, don’t you?”

Luthuli turned away from the window to face the squat, balding white man seated on the other side of his desk, Taffy Collins, a fellow Party member and one of the ANC’s chief military strategists, had been his mentor for years. Whoever had picked him as the bearer of bad tidings had made a brilliant tactical move.

Luthuli pulled his chair back and sat down.

“We’ve known each other too long to play guessing games, Taffy. Say what you’ve been ordered to say. “

“All right.” Collins nodded abruptly.

“The Executive Council has decided to accept Haymans’s offers at face value. The negotiations will continue.”

Luthuh gritted his teeth.

“Have our leaders gone mad? These socalled talks are nothing more than a sham, a facade to hide Pretoria’s crimes. “

Collins held up a single plump hand.

“I agree, Sese. And so do many of the

Council members.”

“Then why agree to this… “

“Idiocy?” Collins smiled thinly.

“Because we have no other realistic choice. For once those fat Boer bastards have behaved very cleverly indeed.

If we spurn this renewed overture, many around the world will blame us for the continuing violence.

“Just as important, our ‘steadfast’ hosts here in Lusaka have made it clear that they want these peace talks to go ahead. If we disappoint them, they’ll disappoint us-by blocking arms shipments, food, medicine, and all the other supplies we desperately need.”

“I see,” Luthuli said flatly.

“So we’re being blackmailed into throwing away our years of armed struggle. The Boers can continue to kill us while whispering sweet nothings to our negotiators.”

“Not a bit of it, comrade.” Collins spread his hands wide.

“What do you really think will come of all this jabbering over a fancy round table?”

Collins laughed harshly, answering his own question.

“Nothing! The hard-line Afrikaners will never willingly agree to meet our fundamental demands: open voting, redistribution of South Africa’s wealth, and guarantees that the people will own all the means of production.”

Collins leaned forward and tapped Luthuli’s desk with a finger.

“Mark my words, Sese. In three months’ time these ridiculous talks won’t even be a bad memory. The weak kneed cowards in our own ranks will be discredited, and we can get back to the business of bringing Pretoria to its knees. “

Luthuli sat rigid for a moment, thinking over what Collins had said. The man was right, as always, but “What about Broken Covenant?”

“You’ve set it in motion, am I right?”

Luthuli nodded.

“A week ago. The orders are being passed south through our courier chain right now.”

Collins shook his head.

“Then you’ll have to abort. Pull our people back into cover while you still can.”

“It will be difficult. Some have already left for the rendezvous point. “

“Sese, I don’t care how difficult it is. Broken Covenant must be called off.” The ANC strategist sounded faintly exasperated now.

“At a time when the Afrikaners seem outwardly reasonable, carrying out such an operation would be a diplomatic disaster we can’t afford! Do you understand that?”

Luthuli nodded sharply, angry at being talked to as if he were a wayward child.

“Good.” Collins softened his tone.

“So we’ll sit quietly for now. And in six months, you’ll get another chance to make those slave-owning bastards pay, right?”

“As you say.” Luthuli felt his anger draining away as he reached for the phone. Cosate’s revenge would be postponed, not abandoned.

JUNE I O-GAZANKULU PRIMARY SCHOOL, SOWETO

TOWNSHIP, SOUTH AFRICA

Nearly fifty small children crammed the classroom. A few sat in rickety wooden desks, but most squatted on the cracked linoleum floor or jostled for space against the school’s cement-block walls. Despite the crowding, they listened quietly to their teacher as he ran through the alphabet again. Most of the children knew that they were getting the only education they’d ever be allowed by government policy and economic necessity. And they were determined to learn as much as possible before venturing out into the streets in a futile search for work.

Nthato Mbeki turned from the blackboard and wiped his hands on a rag. He avoided the eager eyes of his students. They wanted far more than he could give them in this tumbledown wreck of a school. He didn’t have the resources to teach them even the most basic skills-reading, writing, and a little arithmetic-let alone anything more complicated. And that was exactly what South Africa’s rulers desired. From Pretoria’s perspective, continued white rule depended largely on keeping the nation’s black majority unskilled, ignorant, and properly servile.

Mbeki’s hands tightened around the chalk-smeared rag, crushing out a fine white powder before he dropped it onto his desk. He swallowed hard, trying not to let the children see his anger. It would only frighten them.

His hatred of apartheid and its creators grew fiercer with every passing day. Only his secret work as an ANC courier let him fight the monstrous injustices he saw all around. Lately even that had begun to seem too passive. After all, what was he really to the ANC? Nothing more than a link in a long, thin chain, a single neuron in a network stretching back to

Lusaka. No one of consequence. He thought again of asking his controller for permission to play a more active part in the struggle.

Mbeki’s Japanese wristwatch beeped, signaling the end of another sc hot-.)l day. He looked at the sea of eager, innocent faces around him and nodded.

“Class dismissed. But don’t forget to review your primers before tomorrow. I shall expect you to have completed pages four through six for our next lesson. “

He sat down at his desk as the children filed out, all quiet broken by their high-pitched, excited voices.

“Dr. Mbeki?”

He glanced up at the school secretary, glad to have his increasingly bleak thoughts interrupted.

“Yes?”

“You have a phone call, Doctor. From your aunt.”

Mbeki felt his depression lifting. He had work to do.

DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA

Erik Muller stared at the watercolor landscape on his office wall without seeing it, his mind fixed on the surveillance van parked near Soweto’s

Gazankulu Primary School. He gently stroked his chin, frowning as his fingers rasped across whiskers that had grown since his morning shave.

“Repeat the message Mbeki just received.”

Field Agent Paul Reynders had been locked away inside the windowless, almost airless van for nearly eight hours. Eight hours spent in what was essentially an unheated metal box jammed full of sophisticated electronic gear-voice-activated recorders hooked into phone taps and bugs, and video monitors connected to hidden cameras trained on the school and its surroundings. His fatigue could plainly be heard in the leaden, listless voice that poured out of the speakerphone.

“They told him that his aunt in Ciskei was sick, but that it was only a minor cold.”

Muller ran a finger down the list of code phrases captured at Gawarnba.

Ah, there. His finger stopped moving and he swore under his breath. Damn it. The ANC was aborting its operation! Why?

His mind raced through a series of possibilities, evaluating and then dismissing them at lightning speed. Had the guerrillas at last realized that their Gawamba document cache had

been compromised? Unlikely. They’d never have gone this far with Broken

Covenant if they’d had the slightest reason to suspect that. Had his surveillance teams been spotted? Again doubtful. None of the men they’d been tracking had shown any signs of realizing that they’d been tagged.

Muller shook his head angrily. It had to be those damned upcoming talks.

With the world hoping for progress toward a peaceful solution in South

Africa, the ANC’s politicians must be just as gutless as Haymans and his cronies. They were trying to muzzle Umkhonto’s boldest stroke ever, probably fearing that even its success would backfire on them. They were right of course. Clever swine.

He almost smiled, thinking of how his ANC counterpart must have taken the news of Broken Covenant’s postponement. Sese Luthuli couldn’t be very happy with his own masters at this moment.

Muller raised his eyes from the captured code list to the grainy, black-and-white photo tacked up beside his favorite watercolor. Taken secretly by one of South Africa’s deep cover agents, it showed Luthuli striding arrogantly down a Lusaka street, surrounded by his ever-present bodyguards. Muller kept it pinned in constant view in the belief that seeing his enemy’s face helped him anticipate his enemy’s moves.

Besides, Luthuli was quite a handsome man, for a black. High cheekbones. A proud, almost aquiline nose. Fierce, predatory eyes. A worthy adversary.

Muller forced such thoughts out of his mind. He had more urgent business at hand. He could hear Reynders; breathing heavily over the phone, waiting patiently for further instructions.

What could be done? If he did nothing, it would be six more months before the ANC could even hope to launch Broken Covenant again. And who could see that far into the future? Six months was an eternity in the present political climate. In six months, Karl Vorster might no longer be minister of law and order. The negotiations might still be under way. News of the documents captured at Gawamba might leak, despite all his precautions.

Anything could happen.

Muller shook his head. He didn’t have any real choice. If the ANC operation was aborted now, the golden opportunity it represented to the

AWB, to Vorster, and to Muller himself, would vanish. That could not be allowed. He cleared his throat.

“Has this man Mbeki passed his message on?”

“No, sir.” Reynders sounded confident.

“His contact works evenings. He probably won’t even try to place a call until later tonight.”

“Excellent.” Muller didn’t bother hiding his relief. He still had time to break the ANC communications chain.

“Listen carefully, Paul. I want you to cut off all phone service to Mbeki’s immediate neighborhood. By five tonight, I want every telephone for six blocks around his house as dead as Joseph Stalin. Is that clear?”

Reynders answered immediately, “Yes, Director.”

“Good. And have two of your best Soweto ‘pets’ call me within the hour.

I have something I want taken care of.”

BILA ST REEl SOWETO TO%NSHIP

Nthato Mbeki pressed the receiver to his ear for what seemed the hundredth time. Nothing. He couldn’t hear a sound. Not even the normal, buzzing dial tone.

He slammed the phone down in frustration. The message he’d been given had to get through tonight. He couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He’d have to make the call from somewhere else. Maybe the school or one of the other teachers had a working line.

Mbeki pulled on a jacket for protection against the cold night air and stepped out his front door. With the sun down, Soweto lay wrapped in darkness. Only a few feeble streetlamps lit the pitch-black sky, and even those were cloaked by smoke from the coal fires used to heat Soweto’s homes.

He pulled his collar closer and started walking toward the primary school, picking his way carefully through piles of trash left lying in the street.

A hundred yards down the road, two young black men sat

impatiently in a small, battered Fiat. They’d been waiting for more than an hour, fidgeting in the growing cold.

The two men were “pets,” a term used by South Africa’s security services to describe the petty thieves, collaborators, and outright thugs used for dirty work inside the all-black townships. They were convenient, obedient, and best of all, virtually untraceable. Crimes they committed could easily be blamed on the violent gangs who already roamed township streets.

The driver turned to his younger, shorter companion.

“Well? Is that the bastard?”

The other man slowly lowered the starlight scope he’d been using to scan

Mbeki’s house.

“That’s the schoolteacher. No doubt about it.”

“About time .” The driver started the car and pulled smoothly away from the curb. His foot shoved down hard on the accelerator. Within seconds, the

Fiat was moving at sixty miles an hour, racing down the darkened street without headlights.

Mbeki didn’t even have time to turn before the car slammed into him and crushed his skull beneath its spinning tires. By the time his neighbors poured out of their houses, Dr. Nthato Mbeki, one of Soweto’s most promising teachers, lay sprawled on Bila Street’s dirt surface, bloody and unmoving.

Without any eyewitnesses to question, Soweto’s harried police force could only list his death as another unsolved hit and-run accident.

The signal to abort Broken Covenant died with him.