Vortex

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.