Vortex

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: