Vortex

The subbasement meeting room had an oddly colonial appearance, with wooden wainscoting and elaborate molding on its low ceiling. The multimedia projection screen hung on one wall would have jarred an architect’s sensibilities, but this was a working space-not a tourist showcase. There would never be any photo opportunities here. The only decorations on its walls were maps of the world, the USA, and the Soviet

Union.

The Vice President flipped to the first page of his agenda and watched as the others followed suit.

Forrester was not a tall man, something that was rarely noticed because he always seemed to be in motion. Trotting down airplane ramps in foreign countries. Striding into flag draped banquet halls. Or racing through a rapid-fire round of golf at the Congressional country club. He often joked that he was actually six foot eight, but had put the extra inches in escrow to avoid appearing taller than the President. It was a joke that reflected the all too bitter truth that the vice presidency was an office with too much ceremony and too little responsibility, but right now he had real work to do.

He tapped the table gently, calling the meeting to order.

“All right.

Let’s get down to it.”

He tossed the printed agenda back onto the table.

“Un-3

fortunately, the first item before us didn’t come up in time to make it onto the documents sent to you for review last night. South Africa popped up at my breakfast with the President this morning. He’s asked us to discuss a response to Pretoria’s latest actions-including this new troop call-up the wire services are reporting.”

Some of the men sitting around the table looked momentarily blank. South

Africa was a long way outside the boundaries of their ordinary day-to-day concerns. For most of their professional lives, the continuing

U.S.-Soviet military and political tug-of-war had been the central reality. Some of them still found it difficult to adjust to a world where conflicts didn’t necessarily slide neatly into the usual East versus West pigeonhole.

Besides, data on Africa’s internal affairs rarely made it through the screening process managed by each cabinet department’s and intelligence agency’s junior staffers. All too often it wound up occupying waste space on rarely punched up computer disks or gathering dust in rusting file drawers.

Forrester hid a wry grin. For once, he had an advantage over most of the experts around this table. As a senator, he’d served on the Foreign

Relations Committee and had spent a lot of time fencing with anti apartheid zealots on the Senate floor.

He looked toward the end of the table, toward a dapper, bookish-looking little man whose narrow face bore a somewhat incongruous full beard and neatly trimmed mustache.

“Look, Ed, why don’t you give us a quick rundown on our recent ‘relations’ with South Africa’s new government.” He didn’t bother to hide the irony in his voice.

“Certainly, Mr. Vice President.” Edward Hurley, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, nodded politely. His presence at the meeting was the result of a hurried, early morning call by Forrester to the State Department.

Hurley studied the faces around the table.

“Essentially, our relations with the new government headed by President Vorster can best be summed up as ‘cold and barely correct. “

He paused, took off his tortoiseshell glasses, and started cleaning the lenses with a rumpled handkerchief.

“We had

another indication of just what that means last week when our ambassador,

Bill Kirk, visited Vorster for the first time since the Blue Train massacre.

Bill had instructions from the secretary to find out just how far Pretoria plans to go in reintroducing strict apartheid.”

Hurley smiled thinly and put his glasses back on.

“Unfortunately,

Ambassador Kirk never had the chance to ask. Instead, he was forced to sit through a half-hour-long lecture by Vorster on our foreign policy failures in the region. Shortly after that, Pretoria notified us that they were unilaterally reducing the number of our embassy staff personnel. And

Vorster’s flatly refused all further attempts to meet with him. We’ve been shunted down to below the ministerial level. “

Muttered disbelief rolled around the table. What the hell was South

Africa’s new leader playing at? Political disagreements between Washington and Pretoria were common enough, but why the flagrant and apparently calculated discourtesy?

The Vice President watched his colleagues closely, wondering how they’d react to the full version of Vorster’s snub. Just reading Kirk’s telexed summary of the meeting had raised his own blood pressure.

Apparently Kirk hadn’t even been given the opportunity to say hello.

Instead, Vorster had launched straight into a scathing diatribe full of contempt for what the South African called “America’s shameful and treacherous conduct.”

“The man had gone on to accuse the U.S. of meddling in