Vortex

by Larry Bond

  “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.

  “As soon as I can, I will go to my fellow Afrikaners. I will speak to them and explain fully what has happened. And once they have heard me out, those who have foolishly allowed communist lies to confuse them will come streaming back to our open arms!”

  More mouths around the table dropped open and then as quickly snapped shut.

  Too many of them had already learned

  the hard way not to challenge any of Vorster’s cherished illusions.

  “In the meantime, my friends, we must weather this storm of lies and vicious attacks with whatever measures are necessary.” He turned to

  Fredrik Pienaar, the small, skeletal minister of information.

  “Schedule a television address for tomorrow morning. I am going to declare an even stricter National State of Emergency. We will forbid any assembly, any whatsoever, until this crisis has passed. And the security forces will impose a nationwide dusk-to-dawn curfew.”

  He paused, thinking.

  “Heitman.”

  The minister of defense warily met his leader’s stern gaze.

  “Yes, Mr.

  President?”

  “Expand the reserve call-up. I want every trained man in South Africa under arms as soon as possible! Use the new troops to restore order and build more detention camps-as many as are needed.”

  That stung Malherbe into speaking again.

  “Mr. President, we simply can’t afford such a thing! Total mobilization would wreck our economy beyond repair. If you insist on this, we face a depression as well as defeat in war!”

  Vorster’s temper finally erupted beyond control.

  “And we do not need your negative ideas paralyzing this government! Minister Malherbe, you are relieved of your duties!”

  Van der Heijden felt a moment’s elation. First Muller and now Malherbe.

  Another of his enemies had managed to cut his own throat-though only figuratively this time, But his elation faded in the face of a whispering inner fear. The minister knew his job. What if Malherbe’s dire predictions were accurate?

  Vorster snarled at the shocked official, “Only my memory of your past service stops me from having you arrested.” Contempt dripped from every word.

  “Go home-, Helmoed, and rest. You are not equal to the struggle, but that is not your fault. This is not a task for ordinary men.”

  White-faced and shaking, Malherbe rose from his chair and left the room without looking back.

  Vorster ignored his departure. Instead, he turned to the other men sitting in stunned silence and smiled.

  “Now,

  gentlemen, let us discuss a more joyful topic. I believe you’ve all seen

  Fredrik’s proposal that we make Afrikaans, our sacred tongue, the nation’s only official language .. …. Outside the chamber, an Army messenger trotted up with a manila folder stamped SECRET. He was about to enter when a sour-faced aide stopped him.

  “You can leave that with me, Captain. I’ll take care of it for you.”

  The officer shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not. I have orders to deliver this to the President personally.” The aide shrugged, unimpressed and eager to show it.

  “Then you’ll have to wait. The President himself left orders of his own. No one is to be admitted until the cabinet meeting ends. He folded his arms and stared at the wall with studied indifference.

  “And when will that be?”

  The aide checked his watch and shook his head.

  “An hour more? Perhaps two?

  Who can say? They’ll finish when they finish.” He held out his hand again.

  “Come, Captain. Just give it to me and be on your way. No point in standing idle, is there?”

  “You don’t understand! This is an emergency!” The officer glanced quickly around and lowered his voice before continuing.

  “We’ve received rumors that troops in the Cape Town garrison may mutiny!”

  “Rumors?” The aide arched a supercilious eyebrow.

  “I hardly think those are worth troubling the cabinet with. In any event, President Vorster has already said that he doesn’t want to hear any more bad news for the moment.

  You’ll have to wait until the meeting is over.”

  “But…

  “It can’t be helped.” The aide stood directly in front of the door, physically blocking it.

  Muttering under his breath, the soldier stomped away.

  Like their superiors, South Africa’s lower-level government officials were learning to ignore troublesome realities.

  NOVEMBER 11HEADQUARTERS, 16TH INFANTRY BATTALION, CASTLE OF GOOD

  HOPE, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

  Redbrick ramparts, bastions, and cobblestone courtyards marked the Castle of Good Hope as a relic of the seventeenth century. Patches of scarlet, pink, white, and yellow flowers, emerald-green lawns, and museums full of precious paintings, Cape silver, and delicate Asian porcelain identified that same old fortress as a center of beauty and culture. And the scattering of armored cars, khaki-clad soldiers, and sandbagged machinegun positions marked it as a military garrison of South Africa’s crumbling late-twentieth-century Republic.

  Ordinarily, Maj. Chris Taylor found the sight of the castle’s immaculately maintained grounds comforting. They gave him a sense of the permanence and order now in such short supply in Cape Town’s troubled streets.

  But not today.

  Today, he decided that h
e hated the cold, gray fortress walls, hated his job, and especially hated his new commanding officer, Col. Jurgen Reitz.

  He stormed down the long hallway toward his own office, face tight with suppressed fury,

  He’d just left Reitz’s office with a new set of orders even more absurd than the last.

  Taylor was a compact, stocky man, slightly shorter than average height, with sandy-blond hair and a long-jawed face. Despite being a reservist and in his late forties, he was in good shape. Long years of labor in his family-owned vineyards and fruit-tree orchards had seen to that.

  As he walked, he twisted his neck from side to side, trying to ease the pain from tension-knotted muscles. Calm down, he thought, don’t let the

  Afrikaner bastard get to you.

  Any meeting with Reitz was irritating. Taylor’s Citizen Force unit had been one of two mobilized last August and sent to Cape Town on security duty-allowing the Permanent Force battalion ordinarily stationed there to be sent north to Namibia.

  It had been a hard job. The government’s idiotic policies had stirred up enough trouble in the city to make every reservist a veteran in less than a month. They’d put in day after day patrolling known trouble spots such as the University of Cape Town campus or suppressing full-fledged riots in the black townships. But the unrest had only grown worse, and Pretoria’s politicians had insisted on laying the blame on someone else’s shoulders.

  The Ministry of Defense had picked the battalion’s old commanding officer, Colonel Ferguson, as its sacrificial lamb.

  Taylor frowned at the memory. Ferguson had been replaced two weeks ago by this Afrikaner orifice, Reitz, who claimed that he had been assigned to the 16th because of “his special experience in security matters. “

  Since then Reitz had been insufferable, more because of his attitude than his orders. He would speak only Afrikaans, though he understood

  English-and most of the men in the 16th Infantry were of English descent.

  He treated any order from Pretoria as gospel and ordered that it be executed “energetically,” as he put it. But what does a soldier do when the order reads “prevent disruptive assembly”? Ask for amplification from

  Reitz and he’d bite your head off.

  And the battalion’s officers and men desperately needed clarification of their orders. When they first arrived, they’d been needed to police the black and colored townships. But now they were being ordered into more and more white suburbs and city areas to cope with steadily escalating political protests, rock-throwing, and other incidents of anti state agitation-mostly small groups or individuals caught defacing government propaganda posters and the like. The troops didn’t like that at all. It was bad enough being asked to club unarmed blacks and coloreds, but using the same tactics against fellow whites left them feeling queasy.

  The last few days had been especially tense. First the all too-believable reports of Vorster’s involvement in Frederick Haymans’s assassination.

  Then the sudden wholesale arrest of the City Council-an act that placed

  Cape Town under combined military and police rule overnight. Taylor had heard the increasingly discontented muttering from his men and

  junior officers and he sympathized. If Karl Vorster had really seized power by allowing Haymans and the others to be killed, he had no constitutional authority. And the orders they’d been following were manifestly illegal. But what could they do about it?

  Taylor shied away from the obvious answer.

  Reitz refused even to discuss the question of Vorster’s legitimacy or the men’s concerns. That was troubling. Taylor hadn’t been especially close to his old colonel either, but it was important that the battalion’s executive officer understand his superior’s intentions. He remembered long talks with Ferguson, sharing opinions, discussing battalion matters-a professional relationship based on mutual respect.

  Not with Reitz. The Afrikaner treated him either as an idiot child or as the enemy. It was a rare day when he said anything good about the battalion or the men in it. No, this was a matter beyond clashing command styles. This was a case of active and mutual contempt.

  So Taylor stormed down the hall, inwardly raging at the idiocy of his commander, the government, and his latest orders. Dusk curfew for everyone? No exceptions for emergency crews? No assemblies at all? Two people walking down the street together couldn’t be made illegal. Such an edict was insane and utterly unenforceable.

  He stopped short in the hall, drawing curious glances from the few other officers passing by. He could not work this way. He might be a reservist now, but he was still a professional, an officer with ten years of active service and an honorable record, and he would not let himself be intimidated by an overbearing…

  Taylor spun around and stalked up the hallway back to the colonel’s office. He knocked once, ignoring a pale, overweight orderly who stared in surprise at him before wisely deciding to concentrate on his typing.

  He heard a snapped “Kom” from within and stepped through the door, mentally rehearsing the Afrikaans phrases for what he had to say. It was a little absurd, but he sometimes thought that Reitz deliberately spoke quickly to make it hard for him to understand.

  As he entered the room, Taylor already had his mouth open to speak, but

  Reitz was on the phone. The colonel saw him and scowled, but waved him all the way in as he continued shouting into the phone.

  “I don’t care what they are doing, Captain! They are violating the law. Disperse them and be quick about it. I’m holding you personally responsible!”

  Reitz slammed down the phone and glared at Taylor.

  “Captain Hastings has let a situation at the Green Point Soccer Stadium get out of control.

  Another communist riot brewing, no doubt.”

  Without bothering to explain any further, the Afrikaner strode quickly toward the door, buckling on a pistol belt and grabbing his cap from a hook. Taylor followed automatically.

  Reitz stopped briefly in his outer office to snap an order at the pudgy corporal staring up anxiously from his typewriter.

  “Find Captain Kloof and tell him to get his company to the stadium immediately. He is to report to me when he arrives. “

  “At once, Kolonel!” The orderly hurriedly picked up his phone. One did not dawdle in Colonel Reitz’s presence.

  Reitz turned and regarded Taylor.

  “Another foul-up by one of my officers!

  You’ll come with me, Major.”

  The colonel’s personal Land Rover was parked near the Castle’s main gate.

  A command flag fluttered from a long, thin radio aerial. Reitz slid behind the wheel, and Taylor jumped into the passenger seat, knowing the Afrikaner wouldn’t bother to wait for him. He fumed quietly.

  Reitz continued his lecture.

  “I want you to see how I deal with this riot.

  I’ve been trying to make you and the other officers in the battalion understand my policies for well over two weeks now. If you can’t or won’t understand, it’s not my fault, but I’m going to keep trying until you do-or until I find men who can. If my orders were executed more energetically and with less insubordinate discussion, this would be a very quiet, peaceful city.”

  Taylor nodded curtly, hating himself for having to appear to agree even that much.

  The Castle of Good Hope was located across from the main train station and near the city center, and the streets were

  already packed with cars and pedestrians on their way to lunch or early-afternoon shopping. Reitz scowled, turned on his Land Rover’s siren and flashing light, and began weaving recklessly in and out of traffic.

  In minutes, they were headed at high speed along the Western Boulevard toward Green Point-a bulge of level ground pushing northward out into the

  Atlantic Ocean. A thousand foot-high rock outcrop called Signal Hill towered above Green Point’s sports grounds, golf course, beaches, and soccer stadium.

  Ordinarily, the area would be
full of people enjoying the warm spring weather, but barricades, police vehicles, and SADF APCs now blocked every road and path. Most Cape Town residents, wise in the ways of such things, were giving the place a wide berth.

  As the Land Rover roared past two hospitals built on the eastern edge of

  Green Point, the buildings on either side fell away to an open grassy area.

  Taylor held on tight to the dashboard as Reitz wheeled the vehicle through a traffic circle and onto a small access road. The soccer stadium was visible now, almost straight ahead and surrounded by hundreds of small figures, vehicles, and wisps of white that had to be tear gas.

  Noises filled the air. An amplified voice, with the words confused and indistinguishable, could be heard from the direction of the stadium. Some wild-eyed, impractical agitator, Taylor thought coldly. Some idiot who still believed the Vorster government gave a damn about public opinion in the Cape Province. Shouts and breaking glass, mixed with occasional thumping shots from tear gas launchers and the high-pitched, screaming sirens of arriving ambulances, all added to the overpowering din.

  Reitz braked the Land Rover beside a roadblock manned by a squad of armed troops. He had to shout to make himself heard.

  “Where’s your captain,

  Sergeant?”

  The noncom stiffened at the unexpected sight of his battalion’s two most senior officers and pointed toward the company’s command post, set up on an open stretch of ground northeast of the stadium.

  Capt. John Hastings stood in the shade of a Buffel armored personnel carrier, surrounded by several lieutenants and sergeants, all studying a city map. They looked tired, and one sergeant had a bandaged forearm.

  The gut-twisting, acrid smell of tear gas clung to their rumpled, sweat-stained uniforms.

  Reitz leaped from the Land Rover and strode over to the group.

  “What the devil’s going on here?” he shouted.

  Hastings and his command group spun round, startled. They came to attention and saluted.

  “Orders group, sir.” Hastings pulled his blue beret off and ran a nervous hand through tousled red hair.

  “We’re trying to determine the best way to clear the stadium.”

  Another Buffel pulled up, the wheeled vehicle’s angular armored body towering over them. Andries Kloof, a lean, black-haired officer, climbed out of the troop compartment and ran over to join Reitz. More APCs arrived behind Kloof’s command vehicle and halted, engines still turning over, adding yet more noise to the din all around.