4. THE EXECUTION OF OPERATION SAFEGUARD
After Johnny Kleintjes had visited the U.S. embassy, we set up contact with him and agreed to meet him in Lusaka.
Inkululeko kept her side of the bargain by duly recording the embassy visit, as well as starting a surveillance program of Kleintjes.
The operation went perfectly according to plan.
Because of the controlled nature of Safeguard, this office did not deem it necessary to allocate more than two people for the Zambia leg. And agents Len Fortenso and Peter Blum from the Nairobi office were drafted for the Lusaka ?sale? of the data.
I acted as supervisor from Cape Town and take full responsibility for subsequent events.
Fortenso and Blum confirmed their arrival in Lusaka after a chartered flight from Nairobi. That was the last contact we had with them. Their bodies were found on the outskirts of Lusaka two days later. The cause of death was gunshot wounds to the back of the head.
Allison Healy wrote the lead article with great difficulty. Her concentration was divided between anger at Van Heerden and sadness for the lot of Pakamile.
She had cried when she left him behind, she had hugged him tight, and the ironic part that broke her heart was the way the child had comforted her.
?don'?t be sad. Thobela is coming back tomorrow.? For the sake of the child, she had called every contact and informant who might possibly know something.
?It depends who you believe,? Rassie had said from Laings-burg. ?One rumor says he?s wounded. The other says they have shot him dead in Botswana, but I don'?t believe either of them.?
?Shot dead, you say??
?It?s a lie, Allison. If the Botswana police had shot him, it would have been headline news.?
?And what about the wounding story??
?Also a load of rubbish. They say a chopper pilot shot him but not with the chopper, you know what I mean. With this kind of thing rumors run wild. All I know is that the RU have gone home, and the whole operation in the Northern Cape has been called off.?
?That is not good news.?
?How do you mean??
?It could mean that it?s all over. That he is dead.?
?Or that he is over the border.?
?That?s true. Thanks, Rassie. Phone me if you hear something.?
And that was the sum total of information. The other sources knew or said even less, so at last she began with the story, building it paragraph by paragraph, without enthusiasm and with Van Heerden?s betrayal hanging over her like a shadow.
A member of the Presidential Intelligence Unit?s operational staff is under house arrest and awaiting an internal disciplinary hearing after the tragic accidental death of Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi last night.
The rest was more of a review than anything else because they had laid down guidelines for the report, she and the news editor and the editor. The final agreement with the minister was that they would break this news exclusively but sympathetically, sensitive to the nuances of national interest and covert operations. When she was finished she went outside to smoke in the St. George?s Mall and watched the rest of the world on their way home. Streams of people so determined, so serious, so stern, going home just to journey back tomorrow morning, a never-ending cycle to keep body and soul together until the Reaper came. This useless, meaningless life went on with gray efficiency, pitiless: tomorrow there would be other news, the day after, another scandal, another matter dished up to the people in big black sans serif lettering.
Damn Van Heerden. Damn him for being like all other men, damn him for a shoplifter, a swindler.
Damn Thobela Mpayipheli, for deserting a woman and child for a pointless chase across this bloody country. All it would leave was yellowing front pages in newspaper archI'ves. didn?'t he know that next month, next year, no one would even remember except Pakamile Nzululwazi living somewhere in a bloody orphanage, staring out the window every evening, hoping, until that too, like other hopes, faded irrevocably and left nothing but the vicious cycle of waking up and going to sleep.
She crushed the cigarette under her heel.
Fuck them all.
And she knew how to do it.
5. MUSLIM EXTREMIST INVOLVEMENT
Johnny Kleintjes was found executed in a room in the Republican Hotel in Lusaka, the word ?KAATHIEB? slashed with a sharp pointed object into his chest? Arabic for ?liar.?
This obviously indicates Muslim extremist involvement, and the big question is how local or foreign groups gained knowledge of the operation. The most likely explanation is a leak within the Presidential Intelligence Unit itself? and there are several facts that substantiate this suspicion:
i. The operation was infiltrated at an early stage? the Muslims were in Lusaka, waiting for Kleintjes and the CIA operatI'ves. The PIU was the only agency with knowledge of Kleintjes?s involvement.
ii. After eliminating Fortenso and Blum, the unknown operatI'ves blackmailed Kleintjes?s daughter in Cape Town to bring a specific hard drive to Lusaka. (She asked one Thobela Mpayipheli, a former friend and colleague of Kleintjes Senior, to do this on her behalf, as she is physically challenged? see below.) The suspected Muslim group, I believe, was not after the fabricated Kleintjes data but the information he had allegedly secreted during the 1994
