Vortex

“Not all of it. But I know where I can lay my hands on the stuff we don’t have.” He turned to Ian.

  “I’ll have to have a few items

  FedExed over from the States through London. It’s gonna cost an arm and a leg… “

  Ian shrugged.

  “So we expense it! If this works, nobody’ll begrudge a penny. If it doesn’t, the network can bill our respective estates, right?”

  Knowles showed his teeth.

  “I like the way you think, boss man.” Then he frowned.

  “That still leaves us with one pretty big problem.”

  Ian nodded.

  “Sibena.”

  He’d been giving the problem posed by their full-time driver and part-time police informant a lot of thought. Even if the young black man was cooperating with the South African security services against his will, they still had to find a way to shock him into working with them-and not against them.

  “Uh-huh. How are we gonna make a move on this Muller goon with Matt still on our tail?” The cameraman’s frown grew deeper.

  “Shit, all he’s gotta do is make one lousy phone call to the bad guys and we’re toast!”

  “Too true. But I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to get a handle on our friend, Matthew Sibena.” Ian bent forward over the coffee table and added two more pieces of electronic gear to Knowles’s scribbled list.

  Then he drew a quick sketch.

  The cameraman pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.

  “You sure you’ve never thought about working for the CIA, boyo? You’re just the kind of devious son of a bitch I hear they’re looking for.”

  Ian looked back and forth from Knowles to Emily and then laughed.

  “Maybe

  I am. But I guess that makes us a matched threesome, right?”

  At least they had the grace to blush.

  OCTOBER 18-NEAR THE HILL BROW HOSPITAL FOR BLACKS, JOHANNESBURG

  Johannesburg lay smothered in a dull yellow-brown pall of auto exhaust

  and industrial fumes. The smog had been building up for days, trapped by a ridge of high pressure that shoved any wind to the north or south.

  Ian Sheffield sat staring out the backseat window as Matthew Siberia drove down Edith Cavell Street, careful to stay, as always, well within the posted speed limit. The young black man had insisted on locking all the Ford Escort’s doors before venturing into the Hillbrow district, and it was easy to see the reasons for his caution.

  Though officially a white residential area, Hillbrow had long been a bustling multiracial neighbor hoW-full of trendy cafes, inexpensive apartment buildings, and late-night jazz clubs. But time and the Vorster regime’s return to strict apartheid had not been kind to the area. Now the district’s cracked sidewalks, trash-filled alleys, and boarded-up windows stood in stark contrast to the walled mansions, swimming pools, and flowering gardens of the rich white suburbs north of Johannesburg.

  Though it was broad daylight, few people were on the streets. Most were at work, in the government’s crowded detention camps, or staying close to their illegally occupied flats. And some of those who dared to venture out shook angry fists or spat contemptuously at the sight of white faces inside the Escort.

  Siberia shook his head nervously.

  “I’m telling you, Meneer Ian, this is a bad place, a dangerous place. Surely you and Sam could find another area to take your pictures today?”

  Ian leaned forward.

  “Don’t sweat it, Matt. We’ll be okay. But we got the word through the grapevine that there might be some kind of illegal demonstration at the hospital here. That’s too good to pass up, right,

  Sam?”

  Knowles winked back and then nudged him, pointing out a graffiti-smeared phone booth a few yards ahead,

  Ian nodded. It was time to activate their plan. He could feet his heart starting to race. A lot depended on what happened in the next few minutes. If they couldn’t turn Siberia against his masters, they’d have to abandon all hope of nailing Erik Muller.

  Ian tapped Siberia on the shoulder.

  “Pull in right here, Matt. Sam and

  I can walk the rest of the way. We’ll take a few back alleys to avoid the cops.”

  They popped the doors open as the Escort coasted into the curb and stopped.

  Ian shrugged into his favorite on-camera blazer as Knowles pulled his gear off the backseat and out of the trunk. Then he waited while Knowles bent low one final time, fiddled with something out of sight inside the trunk, and slammed the lid shut.

  The little cameraman nodded once. They were ready.

  Ian leaned in through the driver’s side window.

  “Just take it easy while we’re gone, Matt. We’ll be back in a jiff .

  “

  He ignored the stricken look on the man’s face and headed toward the phone booth, fingering his pockets as though looking for change. Knowles followed him with the Minicam and sound gear slung over his shoulder,

  Once inside the phone booth, Ian waited until Sam stopped behind him—blocking most of Sibena’s view. Then he picked up the receiver and hurriedly unscrewed the mouthpiece. A small metal disk lay nestled loosely inside-the microphone disk that ordinarily transformed sound waves into electrical impulses for transmission over the phone lines. He tapped it out into his cupped palm and slipped it into one of his jacket pockets.

  “C’mon, boyo. I can’t stand here looking like a barn door all day.”

  Knowles’s mutter showed that he was just as nervous.

  “Almost done.” Ian cradled the receiver between his ear and shoulder, pretending to make a call. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a microphone disk that looked very much like the one he’d just removed. But this disk had another, very special function built into its wafer-thin circuits. Over short distances, it worked like a miniature wireless transmitter. And any conversation over this telephone could now be picked up by the radio receiver and tape recorder hidden inside the Escort’s trunk.

  Ian fitted the new disk into place and screwed the mouthpiece shut. Sweat trickled into his eyes and he wiped it off on his pants leg. Done.

  He backed out of the phone booth and waved toward the car where Matthew

  Sibena sat peering anxiously at them through the front windshield. Then Ian and Knowles moved

  away down a nearby alley, skirting heaped piles of rotting garbage-walking fast until they were out of sight.

  The alley opened up onto Klein Street beside a small, shabby Dutch Reformed

  Church. Somebody had scrawled anti-Vorster slogans in white paint across its brown brick walls.

  “This way.” Knowles pointed off to the right.

  “There’s another alley leading back a few yards up.”

  A minute later, Ian and his cameraman crouched near the side of a nightclub that had been raided and padlocked shut by the police. From their vantage point behind an overflowing Dumpster, they could just see the phone booth.

  Matthew Siberia was in the booth, talking on the telephone and gesturing frantically while turning from side to side to see if they were on their way back.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Your cockeyed plan worked!” Knowles shook his head.

  “He actually fell for it. Son, you’re a frigging cloak-and-dagger genius!”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “There he goes!”

  Ian risked another look. The phone booth was empty. Their driver was probably already back inside the car, waiting nervously for their return with that same helpful, friendly expression he always wore. Ian was staking a lot on the belief that much of Matthew Sibena’s desire to help was quite genuine.

  Ian glanced down at Knowles.

  “Okay, we’ll let him stew for another couple of minutes and then head back acting disgusted… like the whole trip was just one more wasted afternoon. Then I’ll pretend to make another call and switch the mike disks again. Right?”

  The cameraman nodded.

  “Cool.” He squa
tted down on his haunches behind the

  Dumpster.

  “So when are we going to spring our little tape on our pal over there?”

  Ian squatted beside him, his forehead creased in thought.

  “Later today. At the studio. I’ve got a few pieces of file footage I want to show Matt first-to put him in the right frame of mind, if you know what I mean.”

  Knowles grinned suddenly and muttered something under his breath. Ian didn’t catch all of it-just the words “one devious son of a bitch.”

  Matthew Siberia sat awkwardly on a folding metal chair, intently watching the images flickering across a video monitor. Scenes of carnage shot at peaceful demonstrations turned into riots. Scenes of whip-wielding South

  African police and foam-flecked attack dogs. Clips of hate-filled passages from Karl Vorster’s speeches. Pictures of black-on-red swastika banners and chanting, roaring brownshirts. All flashing by at a lightning-quick tempo.

  The videotape ended with a simple shot of a teenaged black girl running in panic from the police, blood streaming from a cut on her forehead. The camera zoomed in and focused on her anguished face and froze-locking the image in place until Ian got up and turned the VCR off.

  He swung round and studied Sibena’s tear-streaked face carefully.

  “Pretty horrible stuff, huh, Matt?”

  The young black man coughed, wiped the tears off his face, and looked away.

  “it is terrible, meneer. I wish it were not so.”

  “You do?” Ian sounded surprised. He hit the VCR’s rewind button and pretended to watch the tape counter rolling back. His eyes, though, were really focused on Sibena’s reflection in the darkened TV monitor.

  “Say,

  Matt, did you ever join the ANC or any of the other antigovernment groups?”

  The young man shook his head slowly from side to side without looking up from the floor.

  “I was never political.” Emotion choked his voice.

  “You must understand, meneer. Life in the townships is hard, impossibly hard.

  It’s very difficult to find work to put food on the table.”

  He looked down at his hands.

  “I’ve never had time to work for freedom. And

  I am ashamed of that.”

  For an instant, Ian was tempted to drop the matter right there. Pushing

  Sibena to the wall felt uncomfortably like bullying a handicapped child. As a white, middle-class American, Ian knew he’d never been subjected to even a tenth of

  the subtle pressures and outright suffering inflicted on nonwhite South

  Africans.

  A glance at the tape recorder lying beside the VCR hardened his resolve.

  Certain virtues had to be expected: honesty and loyalty to one’s friends, to name two. It was time to remind Matthew Sibena of that.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Matt?”

  Sibena looked up.

  “I’ve got one other thing I’d like you to listen to. Maybe you can explain it for me. Okay?”

  The young black man nodded slowly, evidently unsure of just what the

  American had in mind.

  Ian pressed the playback switch on the tape recorder and stepped back, watching Siberia’s puzzled face as the first few seconds of static crackled faintly out of the recorder’s speakers.

  Suddenly, a series of high-pitched beeps cut through the static-the sound of a six-digit number being punched in on a touch-tone phone.

  The phone rang twice before it was answered. A harsh, grating voice came on the line.

  “Monitoring station. Who is this?”

  Ian actually saw the blood drain from Sibena’s face as the young black man heard his own voice answering, “Sibena. Four eight five.”

  “Make your report, kaffir.”

  “The American reporters are near Hillbrow Hospital, at the corner of

  Cavell and Kapteijn. They’re here to see if the rumors of an illegal demonstration are true.”

  A pause. Then the voice on the other end came back.

  “We have no word of such a thing. Report back if such a protest is planned or if the

  Americans take any interesting pictures. And do not fail us! You remember what is at stake, kaffir?”

  Siberia’s recorded voice dropped to a strained whisper.

  “I remember, baas. “

  “See that you do.” The connection ended in a low buzzing hum.

  Ian reached out and snapped the tape recorder off. Then he turned to look at Matthew Siberia.

  The young black man sat crumpled in his chair, his face buried in his hands. Low moans and sobs emerged in time with his shaking shoulders. Ian felt sick.

  He knelt beside Sibena.

  “Why, Matt? Tell me why you’re working for these people. I know you hate them. So what hold do they have over you?”

  Slowly, very slowly, Ian coaxed the whole story out between the young man’s tear-choked coughs.

  Like the parents of most black children growing up in Soweto’s slums during the 1970s, Sibena’s father and mother hadn’t been able to keep paying the fees for his schooling. As a result, he’d gone to work just after turning fourteen taking mostly odd jobs whenever and wherever he could find them. Few lasted long or paid a living wage.

  Then, as South Africa’s economy continued its long, slow slide toward collapse, Sibena found it increasingly difficult to get work of any sort.

  He had few salable skills-the ability to drive a car, to read and write, and to run a cash register, nothing much more. And he was too small and too weak to be seriously considered for any job in the Witwatersrand gold mines outside Johannesburg.

  Finally, out of money and down on his luck, he’d drifted into petty thievery. Nothing serious and certainly nothing violent. Just small burglaries of untenanted rooms in white run hotels or the glove compartments of parked cars. Sibena had existed that way for months—operating in the narrow fringe between legality and Soweto’s organized criminal gangs.

  And then he’d been caught breaking into a locked car. But the Afrikaner officers who’d arrested him hadn’t taken him before a magistrate.

  Instead, he’d been hauled into a police barracks, savagely beaten, and told to choose one of two unpalatable alternatives-either work for the security services as a paid informer, or be sent to the rock-breaking, man killing prison on Robben Island off South Africa’s coast.

  To his eternal shame, Matthew Sibena had chosen the role of police spy.

  Monitoring Ian and Knowles’s activities while serving as their driver had been his first and only assignment.

  Ian rocked back on his heels, considering his next move.

  Sibena’s story was an ugly one, but it was pretty much what he’d expected to hear. South Africa’s police forces weren’t famed for either their subtlety or their sensitivity.

  “What will you do to me now that you know what I have done?” Sibena’s voice quavered.

  Ian felt a sudden surge of anger toward the bastards who’d turned Sibena into the weak and fearful young man cowering before him. He shook his head impatiently, fighting to conceal his anger. The kid would only think it was aimed at him.

  He looked Siberia squarely in the eyes.

  “Nothing, Matt. We won’t do a thing to you.”

  I “Truly?” I

  Ian nodded.

  “Truly.”

  He paused, casting about for the best way to make his offer. Finally, he got up off his knees and pulled another folding chair over so that he could sit on the same level as Sibena.

  “But I would like you to make a decision,

  Matt, a difficult decision. The young man flinched. He’d heard white men offering him tough choices before.

  Ian saw the panic in the other man’s eyes and shook his head.

  “No, Matt.

  This isn’t like what those goddamned cops put you through. Jesus, I hope that’s true, he thought.

  Ian took a deep breath,
unable to escape the feeling that he was about to bet his life savings on a single roll of the dice.

  “All I want to do,

  Matthew Sibena, is ask for your help-as one man to another.

  “If you don’t want to do what I’m asking, just say so. Sam and I will drop what we’re planning and carry on as before-and you’re welcome to keep making your reports to the police.” He sat forward, keeping his eyes fixed on Sibena’s face.

  “But I’ll tell you this much for now. I think we’re on the edge of a damn big story-a story that could blow the lid off this whole blasted country and tear the guts out of the Vorster government. Sibena stared at him without saying anything.

  Ian lowered his voice until it was just above a whisper.

  “We need your help, Matt. We need you to keep the security services off our backs while we ferret out the truth. ” He looked down at the floor and then back up.

  “I won’t lie to you. I can’t promise you that we’ll succeed. I can’t promise you that even if we do it’ll really help make life better here in South Africa. And I sure as hell can’t promise you that we’ll be able to protect you from the police if things go wrong-or even if they go right.”

  Silence. A silence that dragged on for what seemed like hours but couldn’t possibly have been more than seconds.

  At last, Sibena sat up straight on his metal chair. His eyes were red rimmed, but they carried a new look of determination and of purpose.

  “I

  will try, meneer. God help me, for I am a weak man, but I will try.”

  Ian held out his hand and waited until Sibena shook it tentatively at first and then with vigor. They were committed.

  OCTOBER 22-THE CASCADES HOTEL, SUN CITY, BOPHUTHATSWANA

  Sun City was surrounded by a vast expanse of the high veld -a barren plain of brown, withered grasslands, isolated groves of stunted scrub trees, and small, ramshackle villages. Bophuthatswana’s poverty made the sight of the resort town even more startling. It was an oasis of wealth, privilege, and pleasure in the midst of an arid, sun-baked wilderness.

  The resort area’s hotel and casino complex rose around the paved shoreline of a sparkling, sky-blue artificial lake. Hundreds of picture windows gleamed in the summer sunlight-opening onto wide terraces full of greenery and purple-blossomed jacaranda trees. Outside the hotel, sprinkler systems swiveled to and fro, spraying a fine mist of fresh water over manicured lawns, towering palm trees, and an eighteen-hole golf course.