AIDS mess was not enough, now we are abducting women and children and chasing war veterans across the veld on a motorbike, of all things, and everyone who has a nonsensical theory about what is on the hard drive is creeping out of the woodwork and the press are having a field day, even the
that damned assistant editor?s piece, he was with Mpayipheli at school, he talked to the man?s mother. How does that make us look?
The minister was the torchbearer of the president?s anger and she let it burn high, sparing no one, focusing on no one; she addressed them collectively, and Janina Mentz sat there thinking it was all in vain because there were twenty agents in Lusaka and within the hour they would storm the Republican Hotel and put an end to it. And sometime today, Tiger Mazibuko would shoot the big, bad biker from his celebrated fucking BMW and then it would no longer matter that the woman was dead and the child gone and it would be business as usual again in Africa. Tomorrow, the day after, there would be other news, the Congo or Somalia or Zimbabwe, it was just another death in Africa; did the minister think America cared? Did she think the European Union kept count?
The telephone rang on the minister?s desk and she glared at it; Janina was amazed that the phone neither shrank nor melted. The minister went to the door and yelled, ?Did I not tell you to hold all calls?? and a nervous male voice answered. The minister said, ?What?? and an explanation followed. She slammed the door and the telephone continued to ring and the minister went to her desk and in a tone lost between despair and madness said, ?The boy. They have the boy. The newspaper. And they want to know if the mother is dead.?
CIA
EYES ONLY
FOR ATTENTION:
Assistant Deputy Director (Middle East and Africa) CIA HQ, Langley, Virginia
PREPARED BY:
Luke John Powell (Senior Agent in Charge? Southern Africa) Cape Town, South Africa
SUBJECT:
Operation Safeguard: the loss of four agents in the protection of South African source Inkululeko
I. BACKGROUND TO OPERATION SAFEGUARD
Inkululeko is the code name for a source the CIA acquired in 1996 in the South African government. The source was secured after tentative signals from subject during an embassy function were explored. Subject?s motivation at the time was stated as disillusionment with SA government?s continued support of rogue states, including Iraq, Iran, Cuba, and Libya. This author recruited subject personally, as it was the first acquisition inside the ANC/Cosatu Alliance that was not previously Nationalist government-aligned. Subject?s motivation was suspicious at the time, but has since proved valuable as a source.
Exact motivation still unknown.
It took the leader of the operation seven minutes and five thousand American dollars to buy over the manager of the Republican Hotel and pinpoint the room where Johnny Kleintjes was being held.
He had a team of twenty agents, but he chose just five to accompany him to 227. The others were ordered to man the entrances, the fire escape, and elevators, to watch windows and balconies from outside, or to sit in one of the vehicles with engines idling, ready for the unpredictable.
The leader had a key in his hand, but he sprayed silicon in the keyhole, using a yellow can with a thin red pipe on the cap. His colleagues stood ready at his back with firearms pointing at the roof. The leader fitted the key carefully and quietly turned it. The lubricated mechanism opened soundlessly. The leader gave the signal and opened the door in one smooth motion, and the first two agents rolled into the room, but all they saw was the body of an old colored man with gruesome wounds all over his body.
On Johnny Kleintjes?s lap lay two hard drives and on his chest a word was carved with a sharp instrument.
KAATHIEB.
?Leave him with me,? said the black male secretary of the minister, and Allison Healy bent down and said to Pakamile Nzulul-wazi, who gripped her hand, ?We have to go and talk in there, Pakamile. Will you stay with this nice man for a while?? The child?s body expressed anxiety, and her heart contracted. He looked at the secretary and shook his head. ?I want to stay with you.? She hugged him to her, not knowing what to do.
The secretary said something in Xhosa, in a quiet voice, and she said sharply, ?Talk so I can understand.?
?I only said I will tell him a story.?
Pakamile shook his head. ?I want to stay with you.? She had become his anchor when Radebe handed him over to her; he was confused, afraid, and alone. He had asked for his mother a hundred times, and she didn?'t know how much more of this she could stand.
?He had better come along,? said her editor to the secretary.
They were a delegation of four, not counting the boy. The editor and her and the managing director and the news editor, not one of whom had ever been there before. The door opened and the minister stood there and looked at Pakamile and there was so much compassion in her eyes.
She held the door for them, and Allison and the child walked ahead, the men behind. Inside, a white woman and a black man were already seated. The man stood up and she saw he was small and there was the bulge of a hump at his neck.
He stopped at Mahalapye for petrol and crossed over to the small cafe in search of a newspaper, but the small local paper had nothing and so he went on. The African heat reflected sharply from the blacktop and the sun was without mercy. He ought to have taken more pills, as the pain of the wound was paralyzing him. How badly was he damaged?
Huts, small farmers, children cavorting carefree beside the road, two Boer goats sauntering to greener pastures across the road? oh, Botswana, why couldn'?t his own country lie across the landscape as easily, so without fuss? Why couldn'?t the faces of his people remain as carefree, as easily laughing, as at peace? What made the difference? Not the artificially drawn lines through the savannah that said this country ends here and that one begins there.
