Vortex

“I tell you, my friends, we simply cannot go on like this. Not for another week, let alone a month! We must find a way to win peace before our nation burns down around our very ears! “

Reluctantly, van der Heijden turned his attention to the speaker, Helmoed

Malherbe, the minister of industries and commerce.

Malherbe pointed to the sheets of trade figures and economic statistics he’d passed around the table.

“Already the economy is a complete shambles. Inflation is at forty percent and climbing fast. Exports are running at scarcely half last year’s level. He showed every sign of droning on for hours.

Van der Heijden scowled. He loathed Malherbe. The man was nothing more than a gutless, whining, rand-pinching economist. Always a pessimist, a naysayer, and a second guesser He looked toward the head of the table, hoping their leader would put this coward in his proper place.

But Karl Vorster sat silent, his head cradled in his hands as he listened to Malherbe’s recitation of economic catastrophe.

Van der Heijden frowned. Since Muller’s arrest and execution, Vorster had been quieter, less likely to take control of the meetings he called. Even worse, he hadn’t yet named a replacement for the late and unlamented director of military intelligence.

And that was a crucial error. Muller had been a boy-loving bastard, but he’d also been a competent covert operations specialist. Without anyone at the helm, his whole directorate was adrift-unable to plan, organize, or carry out the kind of selective assassinations and kidnappings that might have nipped some of these troublesome rebellions in the bud.

“All of these problems are only compounded when the police and security troops overreact in places like Durban.” Malherbe waved a hand in van der

Heijden’s direction.

What? The newly promoted minister of law and order snapped to full attention. He glared back at Malherbe.

“Brigadier Diederichs and his troops acted properly to restore order, meneer. Are you suggesting that they ought to have allowed those rebels to seize the city?”

“Not at all.” Malherbe sniffed.

“But I’m not sure what you mean by ‘order,” Marius. Most of Durban’s industries are idle. The port is almost completely paralyzed. The jails are full. The morgues are full, and do you know what? There are a lot of white bodies in those morgues-many of them Afrikaner bodies. Oil refinery technicians. Factory managers. Civil servants. Ordinary white citizens. People whose skills we desperately needed.”

He turned toward Vorster.

“Mr. President, by every objective measure, this nation is at the breaking point. Even white opinion is turning against us. We must take steps to regain their support or we will be left without any power at all. “

For the first time in nearly an hour, Vorster looked up from his hands.

“Nonsense, Helmoed! As long as we have the army and the security forces, we will have all the power we need. “

Vorster rose and began to pace.

“Those whites who have been killed were misguided, deceived by a lying press and by communist agitators.” He shrugged.

“Their deaths are a tragedy, but they will be avenged.”

He eyed the remnants of his cabinet carefully.

“Oh, I know what some of you want me to do. You want me to end our war against the communists of

Namibia and to bend to the demands of these communists inside our own borders. You want me to do things that my very soul cries out against.

“Well, I say never! Never! Never!” Vorster’s powerful fists crashed into the table one, twice, and then a third time. His face seemed carved out of stone.

“This is the hour of crisis, when the danger is greatest. If we can survive this time of testing, if we can live through this purging fire, we shall emerge a stronger and cleaner nation!”

Vorster’s tone grew sharper, angrier.

“A few of you even want me to step down. To retire to some country home in the Transvaal. To vanish into obscurity so that you can step up one rung and make your own climbr to power!”

His rough, grating voice rang through the entire room.

“Well, my friends, it shall not be. I will not resign. I will not shirk this burden. I will not leave the duty God has called me to! Only I have the vision needed to save our beloved fatherland. I will not abandon my people!”

He finished speaking and stood glaring at them in the embarrassed silence that followed his tirade.

Van der Heijden caught several of his fellow ministers covertly exchanging appalled glances, and he made a mental note to tighten surveillance on them. Recent events had shown only too clearly that not all of his leader’s enemies were black or colored or foreign.

Malherbe, pale and obviously shaken by Vorster’s words, finally rallied far enough to ask, “And if the country abandons you? Even our own Afrikaners are rejecting your authority. “

“You cannot say who accepts or rejects me!” Vorster pointed accusingly at the industries minister, his voice rising again in pitch and volume.

He paused, then spoke more softly.