A light, fitful breeze brought the smell of death to Col. Sese Luthuli’s nostrils.
He took a careful breath and held it for a moment, willing himself to ignore the thick, rancid aroma of rotting meat. Luthuli had seen and smelled too many corpses in his twenty five years with the African
National Congress to let a few more bother his stomach. The sound of strangled coughing behind him reminded the colonel that most of his bodyguards weren’t so experienced. He frowned. That would have to change.
To liberate South Africa, Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, needed hardened combat veterans, not green-as-grass boys like these. Or like the fools who’d let themselves be butchered here at Gawamba.
Luthuli eyed the orderly row of dead men before him angrily. Twelve bullet-riddled bodies covered by a dirty, bloodstained sheet. Twelve more trophies for the Afrikaners to crow over.
“Colonel””
Luthuli turned to face his chief of intelligence, a young man whose ice-cold eyes were magnified by thick, wire rimmed spectacles.
“We’ve finished going through the wreckage.”
“And?” I,uthuli kept his voice even, concealing his anxiety and impatience.
“The document cache is intact. I’ve been able to account for everything
Cosate and his staff were working on. Including the staging plans for
Broken Covenant.”
The colonel felt slightly better at that. He’d been fearful that Broken
Covenant, the most ambitious operation ever conceived by the ANC, had been blown by the South African raid. Still, he resisted the temptation to relax completely.
“Any signs of tampering?”
“None.” The chief of intelligence took off his glasses and started polishing them on his sleeve.
“Everything else upstairs has been ransacked-desks emptied, closets and cupboards pulled apart, the usual trademarks of the Afrikaner bastards. But they didn’t find the safe.”
“You’re sure?” Luthuli asked.
The younger man shrugged.
“One can never be absolutely certain in these cases, Colonel. But I’ve talked to survivors from the garrison. Things were pretty hot and heavy around here during the firefight. I doubt the
Afrikaners had time to thoroughly search the center before they pulled out.
If they came looking for documents, I think they emptied the desks and called it a success.” He looked smug.
Luthuli’s temper flared. He swung round and stabbed a single, lean finger at the row of corpses.
“It was a success, Major! They’ve put rather a serious dent in our Southern Operations staff, wouldn’t you say?”
The smug look vanished from the other man’s face, wiped away by Luthuli’s evident anger. He stammered out a reply.
“Yes, Colonel. That’s true. I didn’t mean to imply-“
Luthuli cut him off with an abrupt gesture.
“Never mind. It’s unimportant now.”
He stared south, toward the far-off border of South Africa, invisible beyond the horizon. Gawamba’s vulnerability had already been all too convincingly demonstrated. They’d been lucky once.
They might not be lucky a second time if the Afrikaners came back. He shook his head wearily at the thought. No profit could be gained by a continued ANC presence in the town. It was time to leave.
He turned to his intelligence chief.
“What is important, Major, is to get every last scrap of paper out of this death trap and back to Lusaka where we can assure its safety. I’ll expect you to be ready to move in an hour.
Is that clear?”
The younger man nodded, sketched a quick salute, and hurried into the fire-blackened building to begin work.
Luthuli’s eyes followed him for an instant and then slid back to the cloth-covered corpses lining the street. The spiritless husk of Martin
Cosate lay somewhere under that bloodspattered sheet. The colonel felt his hands clench into fists. Cosate had been a friend and comrade for more years than Luthuli wanted to remember.
“You will be avenged, Martin,” he whispered, scarcely aware that he was speaking aloud. An apt phrase crept into his mind, though he couldn’t remember whether it came from those long-ago days at the mission school or from his university training in Moscow.
“They whom you slay in death shall be more than those you slew in life.”
Luthuli forced a grim smile at that. It was literally true. Cosate’s planning for Broken Covenant had been flawless. And if the operation worked, his dead friend would be avenged a thousand times over.
The colonel marched back to his camouflaged Land Rover, surrounded by bodyguards eager to be away from Gawamba’s dead. The long drive back to
Lusaka and vengeance lay ahead.
MAY 25-OUTSIDE THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT,
CAPE TOWN
Ian Sheffield stood in the sunlight against a backdrop calculated to impress viewers-the Republic of South Africa’s Houses of Parliament, complete with tall, graceful columns, an iron’ rail fence, and a row of ancient oak shade trees lining
Government Avenue. A light breeze ruffled his fair hair, but he kept his face and blue-gray eyes fixed directly on the TV Minicam ahead.
To some of the network executives who’d first hired him as a correspondent, that face and those eyes were his fortune. In their narrow worldview, his firm jaw, friendly, easygoing smile, and frank, expressive eyes made him telegenic without being too handsome. They’d regarded the fact that his looks were backed up by an analytical brain and a firstrate writing talent as welcome icing on the cake.
“South Africa’s most recent attack on those it calls terrorists comes at a bad time for the Haymans government. Bogged down in a growing economic and political crisis, this country’s white leaders have pinned their hopes on direct talks with the ANC-the main black opposition group. So far, more than a year of fitful, stop-and-start negotiations haven’t produced much:
the ANC’s return to open political organizing; a temporary suspension of its guerrilla war; and an agreement by both sides to keep talking about more substantive reform.
“But even those small victories have been jeopardized by last week’s commando raid deep inside neighboring Zimbabwe. With more than thirty ANC guerrillas, Zimbabwean soldiers, and policemen dead, it’s hard to see how
President Haymans and his advisors can expect further progress from talks aimed at achieving peace and political reform. From talks that moderates here had hoped would help end the continuing unrest in South Africa’s black townships.
“Now the government’s own security forces have helped bury even that faint hope, and they’ve buried it right beside the men killed three days ago in
Zimbabwe.
“This is Ian Sheffield, reporting from Cape Town, South Africa. “
Ian stopped talking and waited for the red Minicam operating light to wink off. When it did, he smiled in relief and carefully stepped down off the camera carrying case he’d been standing on-wondering for the thousandth time why the best camera angles always seemed to be two feet higher than his six-foot4 all body.
“Good take, Jan. ” Sam Knowles, Sheffield’s cameraman, sound man and technical crew all rolled up into one short, compact body, pulled his eyes away from the Minicam playback monitor and smiled.
“You almost sounded like you knew what the hell you were talking about.”
Ian smiled back.
“Why, thanks, Sam. Coming from an ignorant techno slob like you, that’s pretty high praise.” He tapped his watch.
