indicated the boy outdoors.
?You won?t lose me. I promise you. I will come back. Sooner than you think.?
She turned to him, her arms around his waist, and held him with a fierce desperation.
?Sooner than you think,? he said.
3. ?OLD LOYALTIES?
To understand the intelligence situation in South Africa today one has to keep in mind which alliances existed before the creation of the ?New South Africa? in 1992-94:
? The white minority National Party government of the eighties was closely aligned with both the British MI5 and MI6 and American intelligence services, specifically the CIA.
The latter was involved in a number of joint anticommunist African operations with the former Military Intelligence forces of the SADF in Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Mozambique. The CIA also furnished Pretoria with intelligence during the white regime?s war against Cuba and USSR-sponsored communist forces in Angola in the late seventies.
? The ANC, as a banned and suppressed antigovernment movement in exile, had very close ties with, and received strong monetary and military support from, the former USSR, East Germany (specifically the KGB and Stasi), Cuba, Libya, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and, to a lesser extent, Iraq and other Muslim countries.
? The PAC has stronger ties with Muslim extremists (such as Iran) and the PLO.
4. MUSLIM EXTREMISTS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Khalfan Khamis Mohammed, the al Qaeda agent hunted by the FBI and CIA after the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Tanzania, was found hiding in plain sight in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1999.
South Africa is not a Muslim country by any means, but among the followers of Mohammed in the Western Cape province is a small minority of extremists, divided into several splinter groups, all sympathetic to al Qaeda:
? Muslims Against Illegal Leaders (MAIL).
? Qibla (the word means ?the direction in which the believer orients himself or herself for salat, the prayer of Islam?), far left, aggressive, and secretive.
? People Against Drugs and Gangsterism (Pagad): a vigilante group known for violent action against drug lords on the Cape Flats, perhaps the most public of these groups and the least of a threat.
The biggest room on the sixth floor of Wale Street Chambers was known as the Ops Room and had been used only eight times in twenty-four months? for ?readiness testing,? the term Mentz used for the quarterly trials to test the systems and the standard of her team. The bank of twelve television screens against the east wall was connected to digital and analog satellite TV closed-circuit
The sixteen now seated around the table had a strong feeling that this late-afternoon call to the Ops Room was not a practice run. The atmosphere in the room was electric when Janina Mentz walked in; their eyes followed her with restrained anticipation. There would have been rumors already. The phone tappers would have hinted at superior knowledge, acceding with vague nods that something was developing, while their envious colleagues could only make guesses and use old favors as leverage to try and get information.
That is why the sixteen pairs of eyes rested on her. In the past there had been different kinds of unspoken questions. At first, when she was assembling the team for the director, they were gauging her skills, her ability to wield authority, because they were predominantly male and came from positions where their gender reigned supreme. They put her to the test and they learned that crude language and boorish behavior wouldn'?t put her off her stride; aggression left her calm and cold, thinly disguised anti-feminism would not provoke her. Piece by piece they reconstructed her history so they could know their new master: the rural upbringing, the brilliant academic career, the political activity, the slow climb through the party ranks, because she was white and Afrikaans and somewhere along the way married and divorced. Until the director had sought her out.
Really they respected her for what she had accomplished and the way in which she had done it.
That is why she could enter the room with muted confidence. She checked her watch before she said, ?Evening, everyone.?
?Good evening, Mrs. Mentz.? It was a jovial chorus obedient to the director?s wishes for formal address. She was relaxed, unobtrusively in control.
She tucked the gray skirt under her with deft hands as she took the seat at the head of the long table, next to the laptop plugged into the port of the video projector. She switched it on.
?Let us begin with one sure thing: from this moment the Ops Room is officially operational. This is not a test.? There was a tingling in the room.
?Let there be no doubt that this is the real thing. We have worked hard to get here, and now our skills and abilities will be put to the test. I am depending on you.?
Heads nodded eagerly.
She turned on the laptop and opened Microsoft PowerPoint. ?This photo was taken nineteen days ago at the entrance to the American embassy as part of our routine surveillance. The man exiting the door is Johnny Kleintjes, a former leader in the intelligence services of the Struggle. He studied mathematics and applied mathematics at the University of the Western Cape, but due to political activity, restrictions, and extreme pressure from the Security Police of the previous regime, he never obtained his degree. He was an exile from 1972, too late to be one of the trail-blazers, the
