A dark-colored sedan turned off the highway and halted ten meters behind his car. Its driver’s-side door popped open and a tall, burly man clambered out. He glanced briefly at the fiery glow staining the southern sky and then trudged through the loose gravel until he stood before Muller.
“A fine job, Reynders. Very professional. I’ll see that you get a commendation for this night’s work.” Muller resisted the temptation to pat the taller man on the shoulder.
Field Agent Paul Reynders acknowledged the compliment with a brief, almost bored nod. In truth, it hadn’t been a terribly difficult or even interesting mission. The heaped mounds of trash had provided more than a dozen perfect hiding places within easy reach of what he had been told was an ANC agent’s parked car.
He frowned.
“There was another car, Director, with two or three occupants. But no one else.” Reynders shrugged.
“Definitely amateurs. I detected no signs of any other backups or surveillance teams.”
He glanced again at the fire still burning fiercely.
“I hadn’t expected the second car, but I changed the timer to catch it inside the blast as well. We should have no more problems with these spies.” He said it flatly, absolutely convinced that he spoke the truth.
Unfortunately for Erik Muller, Reynders couldn’t have been more mistaken.
NETWORK STUDIOS, JOHANNESBURG
The studio’s offices, workrooms, and broadcast facilities lay wrapped in silence and darkness-apparently utterly empty, abandoned for the night by a fast-shrinking American staff. Even the South African security guards who normally patrolled the hallways guarding valuable electronic gear were safe at home in bed.
The lights flickered on in the main editing room and stayed on-revealing banks of racked VCRs, monitors, reel-to-reel machines, and the squat, white-eased shape of the studio’s computerized-imaging system. Ian shut the door leading into the main hallway and sagged back against the wall.
“We’re clear. “
Emily looked up at him, her cheeks still stained by new dried tears.
“For now.”
“Yeah. For now. ” Ian rubbed angrily at a smear of groundin dirt from the road on his own face. It served as a grim reminder of the night’s disaster.
“But when the police identify Sam’s body and trace that car, they’ll be down on us like a ton of bricks.”
Images of the burning Mercedes and of Muller’s car speeding away to safety flashed into his mind and he slammed his fists into the wall, making both Emily and Matthew Sibena jump.
“Goddamnit! I should have known! I should have known that bastard was giving in too easily!”
He took a deep breath, fighting for control.
“We have a
day or so before things really start to cave in. Sam wasn’t carrying any ID tonight.” He looked somberly at Emily and Sibena.
“I’ll call my friend at the embassy. He should be able to rig up some kind of temporary papers for the two of you. With luck, we can be on a plane out of this fucking country before they start looking for us.”
Sibena nodded gratefully, but Emily turned away without saying anything.
She moved to the console where Knowles had spent so many of his waking hours splicing and re splicing tapes, bringing structure and theme out of a confusion of recorded sights and sounds.
Ian watched her quietly, praying that her Afrikaner stubborn streak wasn’t about to erupt. They’d gambled and lost. Now it was time to back away before any more of them lost their lives. He felt his hands ball into fists. Damn. He didn’t want to leave either. He wanted to nail Muller’s head on a pole-personally. But there was a world of difference between wanting something and being able to make it happen.
“Ian!” Emily’s voice sliced through his increasingly morose thoughts.
“Look at this!”
She held out a single sheet of notepaper.
“I found it there.
She pointed to a pile of videocassettes stacked neatly atop the computer casing.
He recognized Knowles’s sloppy, almost illegible handwriting.
“Some extra copies of the hotel hijinks … just in case the creep cheats. Get him for me.” Tears bluffed his vision until he blinked them away. The little cameraman had known he might not come back, and he’d still gone through with it.
Emily touched his arm.
“We can’t abandon this, Ian. It would mean that
Sam’s death was for nothing.”
He took her by the hand and looked deep into her eyes.
“Believe me, I don’t want to give up. It’s just that I can’t see any way left for us to get those damned documents without getting killed.
“
She started to nod and then stopped abruptly, sudden excitement creeping in past her sadness. Ian had seen that look before.
“You’ve got an idea?”
Emily answered by tugging him over to where they’d tacked up a spare city map of Johannesburg. She pointed to the site they’d picked for their disastrous rendezvous.
“Tell me, what was wrong with the area around
Madderfontein?”
Reluctantly, Ian mentally ran through the painful, frightening sequence of events yet again. As always, hindsight operated with perfect 20/20 vision.
“It was too empty, too deserted. We thought that’d help, but all it did was make it easy for Muller to zero in on us.”
Emily nodded seriously and pointed at another spot on the map.
“So if we try again, but here this time . She paused significantly.
Ian followed her finger and sucked in his breath, beginning to understand what she had in mind.
Emily saw the comprehension dawning in his eyes and motioned Matthew
Sibena closer. He was going to have to be a full partner from now on.
“This is how I believe we should proceed .. …. Both Ian and Sibena listened with mounting respect and confidence as she outlined her idea for snatching the Gawamba-raid documents out from under
Erik Muller’s nose.
OCTOBER 25-DIRECTORATE OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, PRETORIA
The early-mo ming phone call ruined what had begun as a delightfully routine day.
“Your cowardly treachery failed, meneer.”
Muller gripped the phone so hard that the blood drained out of his knuckles. That same cold, arrogant, demanding woman’s voice! Damn that idiot Reynders! He’d failed.
“Several of my friends wanted to distribute the tape immediately-to the
President, your cabinet colleagues, and other interested parties.”
Muller shivered, imagining the gleeful reaction of his enemies and the hatred of his former allies if they ever saw
those pornographic images, He licked suddenly dry lips.
“Well?”
“You are a fortunate man, Meneer Muller.” Her sarcasm bit deep.
“I
persuaded them to give you one last chance.”
He felt a faint stirring of hope. The fools were going to give him another chance to destroy them! He pulled a thick booklet of street maps closer to him and picked up a pencil.
“Where?”
The woman’s instructions were, like her voice, clear, clinical, and painstakingly precise. Muller frowned at the notes he’d scribbled.
Whoever these people were, they’d definitely learned a thing or two from their failure the night before. It wouldn’t be so easy this time. He cleared his throat.
“And what about the tape? When will I get this duplicate copy you claim to have?”
“You’ll get the tape when we are satisfied that you’ve given us the real documents. Not before.”
Muller grimaced.
“And how do I know that I can trust you?”
This time the woman didn’t bother concealing her contempt and her hatred.