Larry Bond - Vortex

The smile flickered and died when he saw the four men waiting close to his black Jaguar. The deputy minister of law and order, Marius van der

Heijden, and three others-men whose grim, almost lifeless eyes quickly scanned him and as quickly dismissed him as any serious threat.

“Going somewhere, Erik?” Van der Heijden nodded at his bulging briefcase.

The fear was back. Muller moistened lips gone suddenly dry.

“Just taking a bit of work home with me, Minister. Now, if you’ll excuse me?” He took a step closer to his car.

At a barely perceptible nod from van der Heijden, two of the grim-faced men moved forward to block his path. The third stayed by the older man’s side.

Van der Heijden shook his head.

“I’m very much afraid that I can’t excuse you just yet, Erik.” He smiled unpleasantly.

“There’s a small matter the

President has asked me to… well, let us say, discuss with you. “

Muller realized his hands were shaking and he tried to hide that by moving them behind his back.

“Oh?”

Van der Heijden nodded slowly, his smile twisting into a sneer.

“A small matter of a videotape it seems, Erik. A videotape showing you and a kaffir boy.”

They knew! Those bastard Americans had lied! They’d betrayed him after all. Muller’s stomach knotted abruptly and he swallowed hard against the taste of vomit. Oh, God. They knew…

His knees buckled and he sagged forward, watching numbly as his briefcase clattered onto the concrete garage floor and broke open-spilling forged documents and traveler’s checks out in a damning pile. Van der Heijden’s agents grabbed his arms and hauled him upright.

The older man looked down at the multiple passports and money and then back up into Muller’s horrified face.

“Well, well, Erik. Your work is almost as unusual as your sexual

habits. One would almost think you planned to flee our beloved fatherland.” His smile disappeared, replaced by a disgusted scowl.

“Take this boy-loving pig away. I have some questions to ask him in more private surroundings.”

No! Muller felt his blood run cold. He knew exactly what van der Heijden had in mind. Torture. Lingering, mind-flaying torture. His knees buckled again. Pain was something to be inflicted—not suffered! Please God, he prayed for the first time in decades, grant me a swift bullet in the back of the neck. Anything but this.

“Marius, wait! Please!” He squirmed in the grasp of the two men still holding his arms.

“You don’t need to do this! I’ll tell you everything!

Everything! I swear it!”

Van der Heijden nodded again to his men. One of them shifted his grip and locked an elbow around Muller’s throat -choking him into silence.

The older man leaned forward and took Muller’s red, tearstained face in one deceptively gentle hand.

“Oh, Erik, I know you’ll talk. I know you will. But you mustn’t deprive us of our little fun, eh?” He shook his head in mock regret.

“In any event, the President has already ordained the manner of your death. You, meneer, have nothing left to bargain for, and soon you will have nothing left to bargain with.”

He stepped back and stood watching as his men dragged Erik Muller kicking and gagging toward a waiting unmarked van.

South Africa’s onetime director of military intelligence was about to learn what it felt like to lie helpless and at the mercy of merciless men.

NETWORK STUDIOS, JOHANNESBURG

The photocopier flashed again and again, throwing rhythmic pulses of blindingly bright white light against Emily van der Heijden’s tense, determined face. She stood close to the copier, watching intently as the

ANC documents they’d blackmailed out of Muller fed themselves one by one into the machine, emerged, and then cycled through to begin the whole process over again. Complete sets joined a growing pile on one end of the copier table.

Ian Sheffield spoke from behind her.

“I’m still not sure this is necessary. Or wise. I mean, to all intents and purposes, the story’s out already.” He glanced at his watch.

“People all over the world are going to find out what really happened to the Blue Train and your government in a couple of hours or so. Vorster can’t possibly put the cork back in this bottle.”

Emily brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and leaned forward to check the copier counter. Twenty down and twenty sets of duplicates left to go. Then she turned to face Ian.

“He may not be able to stop the rest of the world from finding out what’s going on, but he can certainly clamp down on the news here in this country.”

Ian looked unconvinced, doubting whether any wall of censorship could hope to keep the story they’d so painfully and painstakingly pieced together from eventually leaking through to South Africa’s restive populations. If nothing else, too many people owned shortwave radio sets that could pick up news broadcasts from around the world. He said as much to Emily.

“True enough.” She pulled another collated and stapled set out of the machine’s grasp.

“Many will hear the news… but how many will believe it?”

She shrugged.

“I’m afraid too many of my countrymen are all too used to ignoring foreign newscasts.” Emily laid a careful hand on the unwieldy pile of copied documents.

“I have the names and addresses of many influential men-men who could lead others against this government. But such men will need to see the proof of Vorster’s treachery for themselves-this proof. “

She stepped closer to him and took his hands in hers.

“I ask this of you,

Ian. I ask your help in what I must do.”

He stared first into her serious, hope-filled face and then down at the pile of papers behind her. Emily had to know what she was asking. If he helped her send these documents to a cadre of potential rebels, he’d be stepping across an

important line-the line between simply reporting the news and creating it.

Did he want to go that far? Could he go that far?

Then he remembered a car burning fiercely in the night the car that had been driven by Sam Knowles. And there was an entire government, murdered by a ruthless power-grabber. That same man had started a war and tortured thousands of people. Sam’s death was tragic, but certainly not the largest of Vorster’s crimes.

Somehow that put things back into focus. He’d already stepped across the line. Hell, he’d been shoved across it by the dawning realization of just what Karl Vorster had done to seize and maintain power. Thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of innocent people had already died to satisfy that man’s ambition and private hatreds. And a nation struggling to shake off its unsavory past had been pulled back into a nightmare of state-mandated racism and tyranny.

Ian shook his head. Other journalists might be able simply to grit their teeth and carry on just “observing” events in this troubled country. He no longer could. What happened to South Africa and its divided peoples mattered to him now.

Ian gathered Emily into his arms and held her tightly for a moment before whispering, “Okay, I’m in. ” He’d help her distribute the documents that could ignite a bloody civil war.

He’d go back to being a dispassionate observer when Karl Vorster and his cronies were where they belonged-dead or behind bars.

OCTOBER 28-BBC WORLD SERVICE

The recorded chimes of Big Ben faded, replaced by the smooth, honeyed tones of the BBC’s leading radio announcer.

“Good evening. Here is the news.

“American television news broadcasts claiming that South Africa’s security services had advance warning of the plot to assassinate President Frederick

Haymans and other members of his cabinet continue to send shock waves around the world. Although the reports, which first aired yesterday, are as yet unconfirmed, they have prompted emergency meetings at a very senior level in London, the other European capitals, and in Washington.