The phone rang. He grabbed it in mid ring
“Yes.”
“He’s outside. Walking toward the Entertainment Centre.” Emily sounded breathless-frightened and excited all at the same time.
“Great. You know what to do if you see him coming back?”
“Yes.” Emily’s voice fell to a low, husky whisper.
“Be careful. Please be very careful.”
Ian swallowed past a throat grown suddenly tight.
“We will, believe me.
And stay out of sight yourself… got it?”
He waited until he heard her murmured acknowledgment and then hung up.
Knowles and Siberia were already lined up by the door. Ian edged past them and opened it just a crack-just far enough to glance down the long, carpeted hallway in either direction. It was empty.
Four quick strides put him opposite the door to Room 335, with Siberia tagging along right behind. Suitcase in hand, Knowles followed more slowly, pausing to pull their own door shut.
Ian knocked once and listened carefully, hearing his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. Nothing from inside the room. He stepped back and let Sibena past. The young black man slipped a thick plastic card through the narrow gap between the door and the doodamb and worked it back and forth trying to force the lock. As he worked, his lips moved silently, either in prayer or in stifled curses.
Ian checked the corridor again, mentally willing Sibena to get the damned door open before somebody saw them. He wasn’t sure what the penalties were in Bophuthatswana for breaking and entering, and he didn’t want to find out the hard way.
Click. The sudden noise seemed horribly loud over the soft, hushed hum of the hotel’s air-conditioning. Siberia stuck the plastic card back in his pocket with a trembling hand and pushed in on the door, It moved, and they were in. Thank God.
Ian led the way into a room identical to their own. A large bed, writing table, lamps, a chest of drawers, television, telephone, and a private bath. All the comforts of modern civilization. Muller had closed his drapes, shutting out the view of the lake and landscaped grounds.
Naturally. The paranoid bastard was probably afraid that he might be seen and recognized.
Knowles moved immediately to the wall shared by their adjoining room. He stopped near the drape-cloaked window and started tapping along the wall, listening intently for the hollow sounds of an area free of supporting beams. Satisfied, he swung round and started panning around the room with his arms outstretched and hands held apart-mimicking the field of view available to a video camera.
“This’ll do.”
Ian handed him a small portable power drill from the suitcase.
Knowles thumbed the drill onto its highest setting and pressed the whining, spinning drill bit firmly against the wall. Fiberboard particles, sawdust, and fragments of insulation puffed out into the air and settled slowly onto the thick carpet. In seconds, the drill bored a tiny hole through the wall between their two rooms. A hole scarcely large enough to be seen, but just large enough to take a thin, flexible light tube hooked up to a VCR.
Ian glanced down at his watch. They’d been in the room for three minutes.
It hardly seemed possible. It felt more like three years.
Knowles backed the power drill out of the hole and moved along the wall, tapping again, this time closer to the door.
Ian raised an eyebrow.
“We need another lead into here?”
His cameraman nodded, still tapping away.
“Uh-huh. One thing you can always count on: if you’ve only got one camera angle, some dumb bastard’s sure to be facing the wrong damned way. Ah. There we go. ” He pulled his ear away and thumbed the drill on for a second time.
“This’ll give us coverage over the whole room. No blind spots except for the h .”
More shredded fiberboard and sawdust drifted onto the carpet. Ian tried to calm his nerves by concentrating on catching every bit of the debris with a small portable vacuum cleaner.
Five and a half minutes down. Sibena stood fidgeting near the bathroom, afraid to move and too nervous to stand completely still.
Ian squinted at the wall, trying to judge just how obvious their spy holes were. Not very, he decided. Even knowing exactly where they were, he had a hard time spotting them.
Finally, Knowles finished and stepped away from his handiwork.
“All set, boss man. ” He dropped the drill back inside his suitcase and zipped it shut.
“Terrific. ” Ian climbed to his feet, brushed a few stray particles of fiberboard off his knees, and headed for the door. Whoops. Idiot. He stopped so suddenly that both Knowles and Sibena cannoned into him.
“What the fu-” The little cameraman bit back the rest.
“Forgot to do something. ” Ian brushed past them and went straight to the queen-size bed. Working rapidly, he pulled the covers off the pillows on one side and tucked them back neatly. Then he scooped two foil-wrapped mint chocolates out of his shirt pocket and set them carefully on the top pillow.
It was Sam Knowles’s turn to look surprised.
“Emily’s idea.” Ian gestured toward the door.
“In case Muller had any telltales rigged to see if somebody came snooping when he was out. You know, hairs stuck in the door and that kind of stuff.”
Knowles smiled.
“So now all he’ll know is that the maid came in and turned down his bed for him. Cute. Real cute.” The smile grew into a full-fledged grin.
“It’s no wonder that you and this Miss van der Heijden make such a perfect couple, boyo. You’re both as sneaky as they come under those goody two-shoes exteriors. By God, it makes me proud to know you both.
“
Ian laughed softly and pushed him out the door.
“Save the bullshit for later, Sam. We’ve still got a lot of work to do before Muller gets back here with his little friend from the ANC. “
Half an hour later they were completely ready. Two video monitors flickered in opposite corners of their room-each showing a different view of Muller’s empty hotel room. And though the pictures coming back through the light tubes were grainy and dim, they were acceptable. Digital enhancement on the studio’s computer-imaging system could remove any blurring and brighten anything too dark to be clearly seen.
Without breaking back into Muller’s room, Knowles couldn’t do a sound check, but he was confident that they’d be able to pick up enough audio.
And if need be, the computer could be used to enhance voices, too.
Ian paced back and forth, glancing at the monitors from time to time.
They were set. Now where was Muller? Had he decided to hold his secret meeting somewhere else in Sun City after all?
The phone rang. He jumped over a tangle of cabling and picked it up on the second ting.
“Hello?”
Emily’s soft voice caressed his ear.
“He’s back. And he’s not alone.
There is a black man with him.”
Yes! Ian couldn’t hold back a small whoop of triumph. He’d guessed right.
“Wait until they’re in the elevator and then come on up. You won’t want to miss this.”
“I certainly don’t.” A faint trace of doubt warred with the joy in
Emily’s voice.
“But the other man seems awfully young to be someone of high rank in the ANC, Ian. “
He shrugged and then remembered she couldn’t see him.
“I’ve heard that some of their guerrillas start training as young as fourteen. And some of those kids throwing rocks in Soweto are even younger.
“Perhaps…” She paused and then came back on the line.