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.”
“About time .” The driver started the car and pulled smoothly away from the curb. His foot shoved down hard on the accelerator. Within seconds, the
Fiat was moving at sixty miles an hour, racing down the darkened street without headlights.
Mbeki didn’t even have time to turn before the car slammed into him and crushed his skull beneath its spinning tires. By the time his neighbors poured out of their houses, Dr. Nthato Mbeki, one of Soweto’s most promising teachers, lay sprawled on Bila Street’s dirt surface, bloody and unmoving.
Without any eyewitnesses to question, Soweto’s harried police force could only list his death as another unsolved hit and-run accident.
The signal to abort Broken Covenant died with him.
CHAPTER
Broken Covenant
JUNE 14-NEAR PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA
Karl Vorster’s modest country home lay at the center of a sprawling estate containing cattle pens, grazing lands, and furrowed, already-harvested wheat fields. His field hands and servants lived in rows of tiny bungalows and larger, concrete block barracks dotting a hillside below the main house. The house itself was small and plain, with thick plaster walls and narrow windows that kept it cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
Twenty men crowded Vorster’s study. Most were dressed casually, though a few who’d come straight from their offices wore dark-colored suits and ties. Two were in military uniform. A few held drinks, but none showed any signs that they’d taken more than an occasional, cautious sip. All twenty stood quietly waiting, their serious, sober faces turned toward their leader.
Despite the soft country-western music playing in the background and the smells wafting in from a barbecue pit just outside, no one there
could possibly have mistaken the gathering for any kind of social event. An air of grim purpose filled the room, emanating from the tall, flint-eyed man standing near the fireplace.
Vorster studied the men clustered around him with some satisfaction. Each man was a member of his secret inner circle. Each man could claim a “pure” and unblemished Afrikaner heritage. Each shared his determination to save South Africa from failing into a nightmare era of black rule and endless tribal warfare. And each held an important post in the Republic’s government.
Vorster held his silence for a moment longer, watching as the tension built. It served his purpose to have these men on edge. Their own inner alarm would lend extra importance to his words. Then he glanced at
Muller, who stood rigidly waiting for his signal. The younger man nodded back and pulled the study door shut with an audible click. They were ready to begin.
“I’ll come straight to the point, my friends.” Vorster kept his words clipped, signaling both his anger and his determination.
“Our beloved land stands on the very brink of disaster.”
