Day of the Delphi

by Jon Land

  CHAPTER 30

  Clive Barnstable, a member of South Africa’s Interior Ministry, met McCracken just inside the international terminal of Jan Smuts Airport and escorted him away from Immigration toward the diplomatic entry point.

  “I wish my instructions had permitted me to employ some backup,” he complained.

  “Those were my instructions,” Blaine told him. “I don’t want to draw any more attention to my presence than is absolutely necessary.”

  Barnstable, a rail-thin man wearing a linen cream-colored suit flecked with sweat, ran his handkerchief across his forehead. “Whatever you say.”

  The commercial flight out of Dulles had landed on time just before dawn on Thursday. The flight was seventeen hours long, and that fact, coupled with the five-hour advance in time, meant McCracken had essentially lost an entire day he could ill afford to. His request to be met and assisted by an expert on Travis Dreyer and the AWB had been made through standard channels, nothing done that would raise any eyebrows.

  “I’ve got a car waiting outside,” Barnstable told him.

  “We’ll take a taxi.”

  “The car’s illegally parked.”

  “Must have diplomatic plates, then.”

  Barnstable’s shoulders slumped further as he caught on to McCracken’s thinking. “You’re right, of course,” was all he said.

  “What about the information I requested?” Blaine asked Barnstable as they moved toward the single check-in desk within the confines of the diplomatic entry point.

  Barnstable’s thin frame bobbed a bit. “It’s waiting for you at a secure location.” His tone became harsh. “This better be more important. The entire schema of Whiteland is not something to be pulled out on a whim.”

  “Whiteland?”

  “That’s the name Dreyer’s given to the private state in the Eastern Transvaal the AWB has formed.”

  “Tell you what. Let’s jump in that cab and you can give me the full briefing on the way.”

  The President accepted the news from Samuelson at six A.M. Thursday with more frustration than rage. He had again slept not a wink, waiting for word that the coordinated capture of the known members of the Delphi had been successfully completed. When the duty officer informed him that Samuelson had arrived downstairs, he knew otherwise.

  The President had tied his robe haphazardly over his pajama bottoms so that a large expanse of bare chest was revealed. He paced the length of the bay window in his office as the FBI director issued his report.

  “So how many did we get, Ben?” he asked before Samuelson was finished, his voice strangely calm.

  “Four of the fifteen, sir. That leaves eleven.”

  The President stopped pacing. “I can subtract myself, Ben. I’m also pretty good at adding things up, and right now I’d say the four we did get left the Delphi around the same time as Bill Carlisle.”

  “Their initial statements do reflect that, sir.”

  “And what about the others?”

  “None of my people can say for sure how any of them managed to avoid our nets. No two cases appear to have been the same. They just disappeared.”

  “A coordinated effort, then.”

  “As much as our capture of them would have been.”

  “So they must have known we were coming.”

  The head of the FBI stood there rigidly. “Sir, I know the responsibility for this lies with me, as does the apparent leak, since my people were the only ones involved. I can say only that I planned the operation with this very possibility in mind. Not a single one of my field commanders knew exactly what their assignment was until thirty minutes before zero hour. In some cases even the location was withheld or obscured until that time. Yes, it’s conceivable a few of the eleven caught wind of what was going on or were warned by sources. But all of them? No, it couldn’t have come from my people.”

  “Are you suggesting that one of those in our inner circle is the informer?”

  “Not necessarily, sir. We know the clock’s ticking on this. It’s conceivable the Delphi member withdrawal was already planned and our missing them was a combination of bad timing and bad luck.”

  “And if it’s not, Ben?”

  Samuelson hesitated before responding, not able to fully hold the President’s stare. “Then we must assume the Delphi knew we were onto them prior to the dispatch of my people.”

  “And if that’s the case, they would also be aware that their timetable is no longer a mystery to us, either.”

  “Yes, sir, in all probability.”

  “Then we might be giving them no choice but to move things up and not wait for next Tuesday night at all.”

  The head of the FBI said nothing.

  “All right, Ben, under the circumstances I think we can dispense with the subterfuge. I want these men found. And if they can’t be found, I want them cut off.” The President stopped just long enough to collect his thoughts. “That means freezing all their personal and business assets. And I want the lines of those involved in the government tapped.”

  “Should I get a court order?”

  “I think an executive order should do quite nicely.”

  “Of course,” Samuelson said, and hesitated. “Sir?”

  “Yes, Ben.”

  “Have you considered going public with this? Expose these bastards for what they are in front of the nation before they can put their plan into effect.”

  “I’ve considered that and a hundred other possibilities. But even in the best-case scenario, that the people actually believed me, I can’t see anything but panic resulting. It also could lead to the Delphi becoming desperate enough to utilize their nuclear stockpile. That’s their trump card, Ben, the major unknown in all this.”

  The President did not add that the two men McCracken had vouched for were at present searching for that stockpile. Similarly, on McCracken’s advice he had not informed the members of his inner circle of where Blaine himself had gone off to, or mentioned anything about the Delphi’s international interests. It was conceivable, McCracken had insisted, that the enemy’s reach extended even inside that circle, and now it appeared his fears were not without substance.

  In any case, whatever advantage McCracken had briefly provided had been lost and, with it, trust. Under the circumstances, the only people the President had to rely on were a single operative presently in South Africa who had been considered an outcast until yesterday and two of his cohorts. Only one option remained.

  The President would order General Cantrell to put the Evac plan into action tomorrow morning. At that point, unless something changed over the next twenty-four hours, the government would be taken out of harm’s way.

  Out of Washington.

  Barnstable brought McCracken to Johannesburg’s lavish Carlton Hotel in the Carlton Center, where Blaine would spend the rest of the morning familiarizing himself with the layout of Whiteland. A laptop computer and a collection of rolled-up blueprint-type plans awaited them when they entered the room.

  “What’s the computer for?” Blaine asked Barnstable.

  “Much of what we know about Dreyer, the AWB, and Whiteland is contained on the Interior Ministry mainframe. There’s too much to copy so I brought this laptop along so you can tie into the system.”

  McCracken spread the blueprints out across the bed while Barnstable activated the modem and tied into the Interior Ministry’s data banks. Whiteland was so vast that it required eight of the blueprints to encompass the entire area. According to Barnstable, the AWB had staked their claim to the roughly 20,000 acres of land three years ago to establish what amounted to a separate nation. The South African government had ignored the gesture partly to avoid the confrontation Dreyer was looking for and partly in the hope that the problem would just go away. It didn’t, of course, and in fact was compounded as the de Klerk administration inched ever closer toward ending white rule. Soon some executive powers would be handed over to a multiracial transition team, the first universal elections
tentatively scheduled for later this year. Accordingly, emotions were running high with the extremes further polarizing themselves from the center. This had resulted in a dramatic rise in the AWB’s ranks. New recruits, Barnstable reported, arrived almost daily, and construction to meet the resulting demand at Whiteland was proceeding at a frantic pace.

  This trend was illustrated by the one-month-old blueprints Barnstable had provided. With few exceptions, Whiteland was not unlike any other town or settlement. Some areas were a bit more provincial, even primitive, because they were not yet supplied with running water and indoor plumbing. By all indications, Dreyer was having trouble keeping up with the need for housing.

  Whiteland’s town center was just that, a quartet of crisscrossing streets set in the middle of the territory the AWB had simply laid claim to. Only a small portion of it was property of the Dreyer family. The rest had been owned and protected by the state until Travis Dreyer had dared the government to stop him from settling it. Apparently, the five-acre parcel of land owned legitimately by the Dreyers in the southeast portion of Whiteland had become home to the AWB’s command center. Blaine turned his attention to the blueprint featuring this complex.

  The command center was situated with its rear close to the woods that enclosed the entire property. It was three stories in height built atop four underground levels of concrete bunkers that could be totally sealed from the outside world. A ten-foot-high electrified fence eliminated virtually any hope of accessing it stealthily from the rear. There was no additional fence, and no other elaborate security precautions to contend with, nor had Blaine expected any. After all, what kind of impression would the residents of Whiteland have if their capital was more like a fortress or a prison? Still, Blaine assumed a regular patrol of guards would be in place about its perimeter.

  “What about these open lines here?” Blaine raised, pointing to a small corner of the blueprint.

  “Air-conditioning ducts,” Barnstable explained from just over his shoulder. “The equipment had yet to be installed when we obtained this information.”

  “From sources inside Whiteland, I would assume.”

  “Yes.”

  “Still present?”

  Barnstable frowned. “The one who supplied this intelligence never came out. The one before that got his hand blown off in an accident. Still got a few inside, but we don’t ask much of them these days. No sense placing them in jeopardy if we aren’t planning to move on what they tell us.”

  “Would they be available to me?”

  “You? Some of ’em got families and want the piss out of there as it is. I don’t think they’d be agreeable to helping a man with your intentions.” Barnstable stopped and leaned over the table. “Those kinds of intentions leave widows and orphans.”

  “So once I get in, I’m on my own.”

  “If you get in, you mean.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard, Barnstable. I just become one of those new recruits you said signs up every day.”

  McCracken continued to study the blueprints and pertinent intelligence data after Barnstable departed to manufacture the identity Blaine would require to gain entrance to Whiteland. He returned from the Interior Ministry shortly after noon.

  “I’ve arranged for your background to fit what Dreyer is most comfortable with,” he explained and pulled a manila-colored envelope from his pocket. “A frustrated out-of-work husband and father.” He gave Blaine the envelope and drew his sleeve up to check his watch. “That contains the identity papers you’ll need to be accepted. There’s a bus leaving for Whiteland from the city in forty minutes time.”

  “And all I do is climb on board?”

  “Whiteland maintains an open-door policy. Only trouble is that there’s no contact with the outside once you’re inside it. It’s not just a question of not being allowed; there are no phones and no mail service. All delivery trucks are unloaded at a central area on the town’s outskirts, and their contents transferred to the appropriate areas by Whiteland personnel.”

  “He’s not making things easy for me, is he?”

  Barnstable shrugged grimly. “Even if you find what you’re looking for in there, getting out with it promises to be bloody hard. And I’m not authorized to help you in that regard.”

  “I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

  The meeting place for the AWB’s newest recruits was Johannesburg’s outdoor flea market located near an old factory warehouse converted into the Market Theater. The bus was already there when Barnstable dropped Blaine off a block away, fifteen seats taken by men who had gathered here from various points throughout the country. Men who wore their hate and hopelessness plain on their faces. They needed someone to blame for their ills, someone to strike back at.

  The bus left at one o’clock sharp and McCracken spent the nearly four-hour ride to South Africa’s newest township in the fourth seat from the rear. Whiteland lay halfway between Johannesburg and Kruger National Park, and for part of the last stretch he caught glimpses of the Olifants River. The bus turned off the highway ten miles past the signs for Marble Hall onto a bumpy, hard-packed gravel road. It passed a number of sentries and signs explicitly warning unwelcome visitors to turn back. Two miles later the bus pulled through a fortified gate and up to a trio of austere white buildings.

  Blaine was instantly reminded of the induction center he had been bused to after enlisting in the army in 1968. Men in the trademark khaki uniforms and dirt-scuffed brown boots of the AWB waited with handshakes as the passengers stepped down off the bus. Three more stood proud vigil on horseback. The men on the ground were smiling. Those on horseback simply stared straight ahead. But their eyes were all the same, harsh and unforgiving. Blaine knew them all too well. They were the eyes of men who lived off hate and intolerance. And he knew equally well that the defeat in the eyes of those who had accompanied him here on the bus would soon change to hate as well.

  A balding, mustachioed man who introduced himself as Colonel Smeed made brief introductory remarks, after which standard interviews were conducted. Blaine drew the colonel himself. When his turn came across a table inside one of the three buildings, he repeated the well-rehearsed background of the identity Barnstable and the Interior Ministry had created for him. The colonel accepted it matter-of-factly, jotting notes in the prescribed areas on a number of forms.

  When all the interviews were over, the new recruits were assembled back outside. Smeed and the other AWB troops snapped to attention with a click of their heels as a jeep approached. Blaine could see a man he recognized as Travis Dreyer standing on the floorboard, holding the frame of the windshield for support. The jeep slowed to a halt and Dryer jumped down, his shiny black boots crunching gravel on impact. He approached stiffly, arms swaying in mechanical fashion by his side and chest protruding absurdly out. He was clean-shaven and had close-cropped corn-colored hair. His eyes were a light crystalline shade of blue.

  An ivory-handled nine-millimeter Browning pistol was showcased in a standard AWB Sam Browne gun belt. It hung too low and flapped against his leg as he crossed in front of his rigid troops.

  “At ease,” he said and kept going.

  He continued up the line of new recruits, regarding each with a hard stare. Blaine was afraid he was going to linger too long before him, but he paid him the same heed he had paid the others. Dreyer nodded one last time at the group as a whole before climbing back into his jeep and retaking his hold on the windshield.

  The jeep drove off and Colonel Smeed ordered the sixteen new recruits to join him back on board the bus, which proceeded on a slow cruise through Whiteland while the colonel provided his standard narration. Blaine memorized the sights and locations, placing them for scale and context against details recalled from his careful study earlier in the day. The blueprints and information obtained over the computer had not done Whiteland justice. There was ample evidence of fresh plantings, and a number of men toiled tirelessly about the grounds surrounding the simple modular homes.
Lawns were being planted, gardens dug. Flowers were in bloom.

  As the bus continued to crawl through Whiteland, Blaine noted there had already been one extension to the school building and that another was currently in progress. There were kids playing soccer in khaki shorts and shirts. Women toted canvas bags full of groceries. A few people peddled about the freshly paved roads on bicycles.

  McCracken could see in the commercial district that Barnstable’s intelligence was already outdated; he counted at least three shops not mentioned in either the intelligence reports or the blueprints. If he had been set down here without knowing where he was, he would have guessed this was a farming community. The only sounds that disturbed the illusion were those of the heavy construction equipment racing to keep up with the demand for housing and other facilities.

  Some of the people on the streets waved, smiling. The gestures were inviting, but the expressions on their faces were closed.

  Blaine was so busy with his efforts to memorize the community’s layout that he simply tuned out the colonel’s narration. Almost before he realized it, the bus stopped before a chain link fence that surrounded Whiteland’s training compound. There was nothing elaborate or overly impressive about what was going on within. Men were being taught hand-to-hand and close-in fighting in small groups. Another group was parading about. One was working with rifles equipped with bayonettes.

  The dummies they were spearing were painted black.

  McCracken listened distantly to the colonel expounding on the high regard in which security was held here in Whiteland. He emphasized the fact that every man and woman who was accepted for residence had to be willing to defend his or her principles at any cost. They were in the midst of a war, the colonel told them, and they formed the nation’s, and the white people’s, last stand and hope.

  Blaine heard the nonstop clacking of rifle reports and followed the recoil of the barrels. The targets coughed white specs and straw into the air, hardly in ratio to the number of bullets being fired. He pictured similar scenes occurring all over the world. Hatred was being sanctioned, provided with guns under a veil of legitimacy. Left unchecked, the Delphi’s plan would spread violence and intolerance everywhere, making it easier for their representatives to achieve control.