Vortex

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.

CHAPTER End and Beginning

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.

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.