Vortex

He recognized Knowles’s sloppy, almost illegible handwriting.

“Some extra copies of the hotel hijinks … just in case the creep cheats. Get him for me.” Tears bluffed his vision until he blinked them away. The little cameraman had known he might not come back, and he’d still gone through with it.

Emily touched his arm.

“We can’t abandon this, Ian. It would mean that

Sam’s death was for nothing.”

He took her by the hand and looked deep into her eyes.

“Believe me, I don’t want to give up. It’s just that I can’t see any way left for us to get those damned documents without getting killed.

“

She started to nod and then stopped abruptly, sudden excitement creeping in past her sadness. Ian had seen that look before.

“You’ve got an idea?”

Emily answered by tugging him over to where they’d tacked up a spare city map of Johannesburg. She pointed to the site they’d picked for their disastrous rendezvous.

“Tell me, what was wrong with the area around

Madderfontein?”

Reluctantly, Ian mentally ran through the painful, frightening sequence of events yet again. As always, hindsight operated with perfect 20/20 vision.

“It was too empty, too deserted. We thought that’d help, but all it did was make it easy for Muller to zero in on us.”

Emily nodded seriously and pointed at another spot on the map.

“So if we try again, but here this time . She paused significantly.

Ian followed her finger and sucked in his breath, beginning to understand what she had in mind.

Emily saw the comprehension dawning in his eyes and motioned Matthew

Sibena closer. He was going to have to be a full partner from now on.

“This is how I believe we should proceed .. …. Both Ian and Sibena listened with mounting respect and confidence as she outlined her idea for snatching the Gawamba-raid documents out from under

Erik Muller’s nose.

OCTOBER 25-DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA

The early-mo ming phone call ruined what had begun as a delightfully routine day.

“Your cowardly treachery failed, meneer.”

Muller gripped the phone so hard that the blood drained out of his knuckles. That same cold, arrogant, demanding woman’s voice! Damn that idiot Reynders! He’d failed.

“Several of my friends wanted to distribute the tape immediately-to the

President, your cabinet colleagues, and other interested parties.”

Muller shivered, imagining the gleeful reaction of his enemies and the hatred of his former allies if they ever saw

those pornographic images, He licked suddenly dry lips.

“Well?”

“You are a fortunate man, Meneer Muller.” Her sarcasm bit deep.

“I

persuaded them to give you one last chance.”

He felt a faint stirring of hope. The fools were going to give him another chance to destroy them! He pulled a thick booklet of street maps closer to him and picked up a pencil.

“Where?”

The woman’s instructions were, like her voice, clear, clinical, and painstakingly precise. Muller frowned at the notes he’d scribbled.

Whoever these people were, they’d definitely learned a thing or two from their failure the night before. It wouldn’t be so easy this time. He cleared his throat.

“And what about the tape? When will I get this duplicate copy you claim to have?”

“You’ll get the tape when we are satisfied that you’ve given us the real documents. Not before.”

Muller grimaced.

“And how do I know that I can trust you?”

This time the woman didn’t bother concealing her contempt and her hatred.

“You don’t know, meneer. It’s that simple.” Her voice hardened.

“Do not attempt to double-cross us again, boy lover. You won’t get a third chance to save your neck. “

The phone went dead in his ear.

JOHANNESBURG RAILWAY STATION

The platforms of the Johannesburg Railway Station were jammed with a sea of irritable black and white faces.

Despite the Vorster government’s best repressive efforts, strict apartheid had proven impossible to reimpose on the city’s overburdened public transportation systemat least during peak commuting hours. A flood tide of tens of thousands of black store clerks, janitors, and factory hands leaving Johannesburg for their Soweto hovels mingled with thousands of white businessmen and wealthy, bored house wives heading for home in the rich northern suburbs. There wasn’t enough space under the train-station roof for the evening commute to be anything but a deafening, sweaty, milling madhouse.

The crowding made it impossible for the detachments of uniformed soldiers and police assigned to enforce order to do more than deter the most obvious kinds of crime or trouble making And they weren’t trained or equipped to carry out covert surveillance operations.

In a word, Erik Muller thought sourly as he watched from the station manager’s second-floor office, the security troops were useless. He adjusted the office’s venetian blinds again, opening them a fraction more to get a better view of the main station concourse below.