Larry Bond - Vortex

“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.

OCTOBER 27-DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, SPECIAL SECURITY OPERATIONS BRANCH, PRETORIA

Even with the air-conditioning off, the office felt cold. Erik Muller stared in disbelief at the police report sitting faceup on his desk. A combination of forensic medicine and dogged detective work had finally identified the dead man found in the bomb-mangled Mercedes.

Samuel Knowles. Age: thirty-seven. Citizenship: American. Profession:

television news cameraman.

My God. The very magnitude of the disaster was stunning. It couldn’t possibly be any worse. He’d given the ANC documents seized at Gawamba to

American journalists! And they’d already had them for nearly forty-eight hours-two precious, uninterrupted days to smuggle the information they contained out of South Africa.

Disaster indeed. Even the country’s whites were growing increasingly dissatisfied and disenchanted with the Vorster government. A costly foreign war, bloody internal rioting,

and a moribund economy had all taken a heavy toll on Karl Vorster’s popularity. For the most part, though, the white opposition had been confined to isolated, angry muttering or an occasional ineffective and easily crushed student demonstration. But all that was bound to change when the true story of the Blue Train massacre broke overseas.

Muller smiled mirthlessly. Most Afrikaners and other white South Africans would forgive their self-appointed leaders almost any atrocity directed against blacks, coloreds, or Indians. Treachery and deceit aimed at fellow whites wouldn’t be so easily condoned or overlooked.

He pushed the police report to one side and started fumbling through the drawers of his desk. South Africa’s impending crisis didn’t concern him-but his own fate did. He’d better be several thousand miles beyond Vorster’s iron grasp when the American television network began broadcasting its story.

Muller spread an array of forged bank cards, passports, and traveler’s checks across the desktop-enough to sustain the three or four false identities he’d need to disappear completely. He shoveled them off the desk into his open briefcase. There wasn’t any point in dawdling. The first news of what he’d given those damned Americans would spread around the globe like wildfire.

He stood up, grabbed his jacket and briefcase, and strode briskly out into his outer office.

Red-haired Irene Roussouw looked up in surprise from her Dictaphone.

Muller patted his briefcase.

“I’m taking the rest of the day off, Miss

Roussouw. I have some personal business to take care of. Tell the garage to have my car ready.”

He turned away without waiting for her acknowledgment. If he hurried, he could just make the afternoon flight to London. And by dawn the next day, he’d have vanished somewhere into one of Europe’s crowded cities.

Wrapped up in his own thoughts, he missed Irene Roussouw’s reluctant, uncertain reach for her telephone.

Muller took the steps down to the Ministry’s garage two at a time. He was breathing easier already. Better to be a rich exile in Europe than a corpse in an unmarked grave in South Africa.

He was smiling when he emerged into the small underground garage reserved for the Ministry’s senior servants.