Mbeki’s hands tightened around the chalk-smeared rag, crushing out a fine white powder before he dropped it onto his desk. He swallowed hard, trying not to let the children see his anger. It would only frighten them.
His hatred of apartheid and its creators grew fiercer with every passing day. Only his secret work as an ANC courier let him fight the monstrous injustices he saw all around. Lately even that had begun to seem too passive. After all, what was he really to the ANC? Nothing more than a link in a long, thin chain, a single neuron in a network stretching back to
Lusaka. No one of consequence. He thought again of asking his controller for permission to play a more active part in the struggle.
Mbeki’s Japanese wristwatch beeped, signaling the end of another sc hot-.)l day. He looked at the sea of eager, innocent faces around him and nodded.
“Class dismissed. But don’t forget to review your primers before tomorrow. I shall expect you to have completed pages four through six for our next lesson. “
He sat down at his desk as the children filed out, all quiet broken by their high-pitched, excited voices.
“Dr. Mbeki?”
He glanced up at the school secretary, glad to have his increasingly bleak thoughts interrupted.
“Yes?”
“You have a phone call, Doctor. From your aunt.”
Mbeki felt his depression lifting. He had work to do.
DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA
Erik Muller stared at the watercolor landscape on his office wall without seeing it, his mind fixed on the surveillance van parked near Soweto’s
Gazankulu Primary School. He gently stroked his chin, frowning as his fingers rasped across whiskers that had grown since his morning shave.
“Repeat the message Mbeki just received.”
Field Agent Paul Reynders had been locked away inside the windowless, almost airless van for nearly eight hours. Eight hours spent in what was essentially an unheated metal box jammed full of sophisticated electronic gear-voice-activated recorders hooked into phone taps and bugs, and video monitors connected to hidden cameras trained on the school and its surroundings. His fatigue could plainly be heard in the leaden, listless voice that poured out of the speakerphone.
“They told him that his aunt in Ciskei was sick, but that it was only a minor cold.”
Muller ran a finger down the list of code phrases captured at Gawarnba.
Ah, there. His finger stopped moving and he swore under his breath. Damn it. The ANC was aborting its operation! Why?
His mind raced through a series of possibilities, evaluating and then dismissing them at lightning speed. Had the guerrillas at last realized that their Gawamba document cache had
been compromised? Unlikely. They’d never have gone this far with Broken
Covenant if they’d had the slightest reason to suspect that. Had his surveillance teams been spotted? Again doubtful. None of the men they’d been tracking had shown any signs of realizing that they’d been tagged.
Muller shook his head angrily. It had to be those damned upcoming talks.
With the world hoping for progress toward a peaceful solution in South
Africa, the ANC’s politicians must be just as gutless as Haymans and his cronies. They were trying to muzzle Umkhonto’s boldest stroke ever, probably fearing that even its success would backfire on them. They were right of course. Clever swine.
He almost smiled, thinking of how his ANC counterpart must have taken the news of Broken Covenant’s postponement. Sese Luthuli couldn’t be very happy with his own masters at this moment.
Muller raised his eyes from the captured code list to the grainy, black-and-white photo tacked up beside his favorite watercolor. Taken secretly by one of South Africa’s deep cover agents, it showed Luthuli striding arrogantly down a Lusaka street, surrounded by his ever-present bodyguards. Muller kept it pinned in constant view in the belief that seeing his enemy’s face helped him anticipate his enemy’s moves.
Besides, Luthuli was quite a handsome man, for a black. High cheekbones. A proud, almost aquiline nose. Fierce, predatory eyes. A worthy adversary.
Muller forced such thoughts out of his mind. He had more urgent business at hand. He could hear Reynders; breathing heavily over the phone, waiting patiently for further instructions.
What could be done? If he did nothing, it would be six more months before the ANC could even hope to launch Broken Covenant again. And who could see that far into the future? Six months was an eternity in the present political climate. In six months, Karl Vorster might no longer be minister of law and order. The negotiations might still be under way. News of the documents captured at Gawamba might leak, despite all his precautions.
Anything could happen.
Muller shook his head. He didn’t have any real choice. If the ANC operation was aborted now, the golden opportunity it represented to the
AWB, to Vorster, and to Muller himself, would vanish. That could not be allowed. He cleared his throat.
“Has this man Mbeki passed his message on?”
“No, sir.” Reynders sounded confident.
“His contact works evenings. He probably won’t even try to place a call until later tonight.”
“Excellent.” Muller didn’t bother hiding his relief. He still had time to break the ANC communications chain.
“Listen carefully, Paul. I want you to cut off all phone service to Mbeki’s immediate neighborhood. By five tonight, I want every telephone for six blocks around his house as dead as Joseph Stalin. Is that clear?”
Reynders answered immediately, “Yes, Director.”
“Good. And have two of your best Soweto ‘pets’ call me within the hour.
I have something I want taken care of.”
BILA ST REEl SOWETO TO%NSHIP
Nthato Mbeki pressed the receiver to his ear for what seemed the hundredth time. Nothing. He couldn’t hear a sound. Not even the normal, buzzing dial tone.
He slammed the phone down in frustration. The message he’d been given had to get through tonight. He couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He’d have to make the call from somewhere else. Maybe the school or one of the other teachers had a working line.
Mbeki pulled on a jacket for protection against the cold night air and stepped out his front door. With the sun down, Soweto lay wrapped in darkness. Only a few feeble streetlamps lit the pitch-black sky, and even those were cloaked by smoke from the coal fires used to heat Soweto’s homes.
He pulled his collar closer and started walking toward the primary school, picking his way carefully through piles of trash left lying in the street.
A hundred yards down the road, two young black men sat
impatiently in a small, battered Fiat. They’d been waiting for more than an hour, fidgeting in the growing cold.
The two men were “pets,” a term used by South Africa’s security services to describe the petty thieves, collaborators, and outright thugs used for dirty work inside the all-black townships. They were convenient, obedient, and best of all, virtually untraceable. Crimes they committed could easily be blamed on the violent gangs who already roamed township streets.
The driver turned to his younger, shorter companion.
“Well? Is that the bastard?”
The other man slowly lowered the starlight scope he’d been using to scan
Mbeki’s house.
“That’s the schoolteacher. No doubt about it.”