Vortex

The men crowded into Travers’s office nodded. As always, Perlman’s political instincts were right on target. The next presidential election might be more than three years away, but three years was the blink of an eye when you were contemplating setting up a national campaign organization. And even though the senator hadn’t yet made up his mind to push for the nomination, he always believed in keeping his options open.

“True. ” Travers’s eyes flickered toward a calendar. Twenty-nine months to the first primaries.

“But I’m still hanging out there without anything new to say.”

He looked back toward one of his legislative aides.

“Got any more ideas,

Ken?”

Ken Blackman was the senior of Travers’s two Foreign Relations Committee staffers. A liberal firebrand since his student days at Brown University, he helped draft the legislation that kept the senator’s name in good standing with the right D.C.based lobbying groups. He was ambitious, and nobody could doubt that he had hitched his wagon firmly to Travers’s rising star.

Short and thin, he paced in the small space available, almost turning in place with every third step.

“I think we should stick with a serious call for deeper, more meaningful sanctions. Not just petty stuff like

Krugerrands, but everything that makes South Africa’s economy tick over.

We could back that up with strong pressure on other countries to cut their own trade with Pretoria even further.”

David Lewin, Travers’s other aide and Blackman’s biggest in-house critic, shook his head.

“Wouldn’t do any good. There isn’t that much left to cut.

Our trade with South Africa is already so low that they won’t miss the rest.” He held a list of Commerce Department import-export figures out in front of him like a shield.

“It would still be symbolic. It would show them we don’t like what they’re doing,” Blackman argued. His nervous pacing accelerated.

Travers wagged a finger at him.

“C’mon, Ken. You know what an Afrikaner thinks of outside opinion. Calling a Boer pigheaded is a compliment over there.”

Lewin nodded.

“Besides, nobody can agree on whether the sanctions we already have in place have any effect positive negative, or none at all.

I’ve seen persuasive arguments for all three cases. And the South Africans aren’t talking. “

“They were quick enough to ask us to lift them after they let Mandela out of prison!” Blackman’s face was red. Sanctions were the anti apartheid equivalent of the Ten Commandments. Questioning their effectiveness was like asking the pope if he really believed in God.

“Yeah. But they still didn’t make any new reforms when we refused.” Lewin moderated his tone, becoming more conciliatory. The senator was pretty clearly coming down on his side of this argument, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to piss Blackman off any further. After all, they still had to share an office with each other.

“There are too many stronger political forces, local forces, in South Africa for simple economic sanctions to have much effect.”

He shrugged.

“And even if the old Pretoria government could have been influenced by sanctions, how about a hard liner like Vorster? Hell, all we’d probably be doing is giving him new ammunition on the domestic front. Some real ‘circle the wagons, boys, the Uitlanders are coming’ stuff. The diehard Afrikaners lap that up like candy.”

Despite seeing Travers nodding, Blackman tried again.

“Look, I’m not saying a tougher sanctions bill will bring a guy like Vorster to his knees, begging for our forgiveness. But it’s a step our friends on this issue will expect us to take. And if Trans Africa and the rest see us backing off something this bread-and-butter, they’re going to start yelling that we’ve sold out to the ‘do nothing’ crowd over at the White House. “

A sudden silence showed that he’d hit the mark with that. Political pressure groups had an avid addiction to name-calling They also had notoriously short memories and a tendency to see betrayal in any act of moderation. And with a possible run for the presidency coming up, Travers couldn’t afford to get caught in a mudslinging match with his own allies.

Perlman caught the senator’s eye and motioned gently toward the corner where

Blackman waited, dancing back and forth from foot to foot.

“Good call, Ken,” Travers agreed.

“We’ll work up some more stringent export-import restrictions. Just so long as we all realize they won’t go anywhere and wouldn’t do much good even if we could get ‘em past a presidential veto.”

Blackman nodded, satisfied to have won even a token victory. He started scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. Lewin looked amused.

One of the lawyers piped up, “Can we put pressure on other countries to do more? How about on the British? They’re South Africa’s largest trading partner.”

Travers shook his head regretfully.