?What the fuck are you staring at?? he called again, but they did not answer.
he thought,
And he raised himself from the hood and looked left and right before he began to cross. He would quickly find out what their story was, but then the vehicle began to move, the big fellow?s eyes still on Mazibuko, and they pulled away and he stood in the middle of the road watching them drive away. What the fuck?
3. THE NATURE OF OPERATION SAFEGUARD
The plan devised by Inkululeko was essentially a disinformation initiative, primarily aimed at directing suspicion away from her.
Although the transcript of the Mohammed interview was in her sole possession, Inkululeko knew suppression thereof would be potentially dangerous and incriminating, due to the fact that both the police (to a lesser extent) and interviewer had some degree of knowledge, which was bound to surface at some time or other.
She approached this office with suggestions that were developed into Safeguard in conjunction with us.
The core of the operation plan was to ?hunt down? Inkululeko, to ?flush him out.?
Our source recruited the services of a retired intelligence officer from the former military arm of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), one Jonathan (?Johnny?) Kleintjes. This was a particularly brilliant move, for the following reasons:
i. Kleintjes was in charge of MK/ANC intelligence computer systems during the so-called Struggle in the period before 1992.
ii. He was the leader of the project to integrate those systems of the former apartheid government?s intelligence agencies almost a decade ago.
iii. He was suspected of having secured sensitive and valuable information during the process. Like so many of these intelligence rumors, there were different versions. The most persistent was that Kleintjes had found evidence within the mass of electronic information that both the ANC/SACP alliance and the apartheid government had been up to some dirty tricks in the eighties. In addition, a very surprising list of double agents and traitors on both sides, some of them very prominent people, was contained in the data.
iv Kleintjes had apparently deleted these files, but only after making backups and securing it somewhere for possible future use and reference.
Inkululeko?s aim was to use Kleintjes as a credible operatI've (both from a South African and U.S. perspective) for the disinformation project to protect her cover and win his trust at the same time, the latter pertinent to acquiring the missing data at a later stage.
The operation plan was fairly simple: Under her orders, Kleintjes would prepare a hard drive with fabricated intelligence about the ?true identity of Inkululeko.? He would then approach the U.S. embassy directly and ask to speak to someone from the CIA about ?valuable information.?
We, in turn, would act predictably and tell him never to come to the embassy again but to leave his contact details, as we would be in touch.
A meeting would be set up in Lusaka, Zambia, away from prying eyes, during which the data could be examined by the CIA and, if credible, be bought for the price of $50,000 (about R.575,000).
Obviously, our side of the bargain was to accept the data as the real thing, thereby casting suspicion on the persons mentioned therein and drawing away any possible attention to her as a candidate for the identity of Inkululeko.
She would then write a full report on the operation and present it to the minister of intelligence for further action, bypassing her immediate superior, a man of Zulu extraction whose name would be among the strongest ?candidates? for the identity of Inkululeko.
Again, this was a shrewd move, as she was next in line for his position, and the minister would have little choice but to suspend him from duties until the matter had been resolved. Which would have placed her in the top echelon: the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee, chaired by an intelligence coordinator, which brings together the heads of the different services and reports to the cabinet or president.
Unfortunately, Operation Safeguard did not go as planned.
The Ops Room was almost empty.
Janina Mentz sat at the big table and watched one of Rajku-mar?s assistants disconnect the last computer and carry it off piece by piece. The television monitors were off, the radio and telephone equipment?s red and white lights were out, the soul of the place was dead.
A fax lay in front of her, but she had not yet read it.
She thought back over the past two days, trying hard to see the positI've in the whole mess, trying to identify the moment when it all went wrong.
KAATHIEB.
The team leader in Lusaka had sent digital photos via e-mail. The letters in Johnny Kleintjes?s chest were carved in deep red cuts, as if by a raging devil.
LIAR.
?It?s Arabic,? said Rajkumar, once he had completed his search.
How?
How had the Muslims known about Kleintjes?
There were possibilities she dared not even think about.
Had Johnny dropped a word to someone, somewhere? Deliberately? The director had his suspicions that Kleintjes had Islamic connections. But why then would they kill him? It made no sense.
