If Johnny Kleintjes had contacted someone else ? an old colleague now at the NIA or SS or MI, said this is what the people at PIU are planning ? But I have other data.
Impossible.
Because then this thing of the phone calls to Monica Kleintjes, the threats to kill Johnny Kleintjes, would never have happened. Why complicate it so? Why endanger his own daughter?
Johnny could just have given copies of the data to the NIA.
It had to be someone else.
She had recruited Kleintjes, she had explained the operation to him, she had seen his eagerness, estimated his loyalty and patriotism. They had watched him in those weeks, listened to his calls and followed him, knew what he did, where he was. It made no sense. Kleintjes could not be the leak.
Where then? With the CIA?
Perhaps a year or two ago, but not since September
n
. The Americans had retreated into the
they played a serious, pitiless game, cards close to the vest. Took no chances.
Where was the leak?
Here she was the only one who knew.
Here. Quinn and his teams had trailed Kleintjes and tapped his phone without being briefed with the whole picture. Only she knew the whole story. Everything.
Who? Who, who, who?
Her cell phone rang and she saw that it was Tiger. She did not want to speak to him right now.
?Tiger??
?Ma?am, he?s on the way ??
?Not now, Tiger, I?ll call you back.?
?Ma?am ?? Desperation, she could understand that. One of his men was dead, murder burned in his heart, someone had to pay. First she had to think; she pressed the button, cutting him off.
When she entered the Ops Room she felt despair. She no longer felt up to the task. She recognized the feelings of self-pity. The director was the source of that. He had withdrawn his support and trust, and now she felt suddenly alone and aware of her lack of experience. She was a planner, a strategist, and a manipulator. Her skill was in organization, not crisis management. Not violence and guns and helicopters.
But the fact remained, this was not about the crisis of the fugitive and a dead soldier.
don'?t get caught up in the drama. Maintain perspective. Think. Reason, let her strong points count.
The hard drive.
Johnny Kleintjes had done what any player with a lifetime of sanctioned fraud behind him would do: left an escape route, a bit of insurance. Thobela Mpayipheli was that insurance, but Kleintjes had not even left the man?s proper address or telephone number with Monica? it was out-of-date. If he really expected trouble, he would have taken more trouble, probably gone to see Mpayipheli himself. At least made sure of where his old friend was.
No, it was out of habit, not foreknowledge.
The same went for the hard drive. It was a piece of insurance from the days when he was coordinator for the amalgamation of the awful stuff. Old forgotten intelligence on political leaders? sexual preferences and suspected traitors and double agents. Negligible. Irrelevant, just something that Kleintjes had thought of when he was knee- deep in trouble, a way of using his insurance. don'?t focus on the hard drive; don'?t be misled by it. She felt relief growing, because she knew she was right.
But she need not disregard it; she could play more than one game.
She must concentrate on Lusaka. She must find out who was holding Johnny Kleintjes. If she knew that, she would know where the leak was, and in that knowledge lay the real power.
Forget the director. Forget Thobela Mpayipheli. Focus.
?Quinn,? she called out. He sat hunched over his panel and jumped when he heard his name.
?Rahjev.?
?Ma?am??
?don'?t look so depressed. Come, walk with me.? There was strength in her voice and they heard it. They looked to her, all of them.
By the time he knocked on the door, Allison had showered, dressed, put on music, agonized over the brightness of the lights, lit a cigarette, and sat down in her chair in the sitting room, trying to attain a measure of calm.
But the minute she heard the soft knock, she lost it.
Janina Mentz walked in the middle, the two men flanking her? Quinn, the brown man, lean and athletic; Rajkumar impossibly fat? a pair of unmatched bookends. They walked down Wale Street without speaking, around the corner at the church toward the Supreme Court. The only sound was Rajkumar?s gasping as he struggled to keep up. The two men knew she had got them out to avoid listening ears. As participants in the plot, they accepted her lead.
They crossed Queen Victoria and went into the Botanical Gardens, now dark and full of shadows of historic trees and shrubs, the pigeons and squirrels quiet. She had brought her children here with her ex-husband on days of
