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 squatted 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,