Let them understand in the first place that if you can?t take the heat, Janina Mentz will remove you from the kitchen. Because, Lord knows, this was no place for failure. She would live up to her promises.
The director knew. He sat there in his office in his snow-white shirt and he knew because he was listening. He heard every word spoken in the Ops Room? and judged it: her actions and reactions, her leadership.
It seemed a lifetime ago that he had asked her at their first interview for the job: ?Do you want it, Janina??
And she had said yes, because as a white woman in a black administration, there were only so many opportunities, never mind that your IQ was 147 and your record one faultless minor success after another, with the emphasis on minor, because the big chance had not yet come. Until the director had taken her to lunch at Bukhara?s in the Church Street Mall and laid out his vision to her: ?An intelligence service that is outstanding, Janina, that is what the vice president wants. A new intelligence service without a past. Next year he will be president and he knows he doesn'?t have the Madiba magic, the charisma of Nelson Mandela. He knows it will be hard work against every form of resistance and undermining that you can think of, nationally and internationally. I have carte blanche and I have a budget, Janina, and I believe I have the architect here before me this afternoon. You have the profile, the brainpower, you have no baggage, you have the loyalty, and you have the persistence. But the question is: Do you want it??
Oh yes, she wanted it, more than he realized. Because it had been eleven months since her husband developed an itch for young things and told her, ?The marriage is not working for me,? as if it was her fault, as if she and the children were not enough fulfillment for him anymore, whereas the only fulfillment in question was the space between Cindy?s legs. Cindy. The pseudo-artist with dirty feet who peddled her fabrics to German tourists from her stall at Greenmarket Square and fluttered her big brown eyes at married men until she caught one in the snare of her firm, free, braless breasts. And then the happy couple moved to Pilgrim?s Rest to ?open a studio for Cindy.?
So, Mr. Director, she wanted it. She hungered for it. Because she was consumed by an anger that was fed by the rejection? oh yes, let there be no doubt. Fed by ambition, too, make no mistake; the only child of poor Afrikaners, she would pay any price to rise above the soul-destroying, pointless existence of her parents. Fed by frustration of a decade in the Struggle, and all she had to show for it despite her talents was a deputy directorship when she could do so much more; she could fly, she knew the landscape of her psyche, knew where the valleys were and where the peaks were, she was impartial in her self-awareness. She could fly? what did it matter where they came from, the winds that blew beneath her wings?
She did not say that. She had listened and spoken coolly and calmly at lunch and answered with quiet assurance, ?Yes, I want it,? and then began the very next week to work out their vision: a First World intelligence unit in a country trying to drag itself up by its Third World bootstraps, a new independent unit with a clean slate.
And she still wanted it. No matter what price must be paid.
Her phone rang with the single ring of an internal call.
?Mentz.?
?Pop in for a moment, Janina, would you,? said the director.
He took a minibus to Bellville? the first opportunity that came up. He was driven to put distance between himself and the airport, regardless of the direction; ramifications were coming through to him one after another. He could not go back to Monica Kleintjes; they were surely watching her. He couldn'?t phone her. He could not go home. He could not go back to the airport? by now there would be swarms of them. And if they were at all awake, they would be watching the station? bus or train travel was also out of the question.
Which left him with the big question. How to get to Lusaka?
He sat in the dark between the other passengers, domestics and security guards and factory workers on their way home, talking about the rise in the price of bread and the soccer results and politics, and he longed to be one of them. He wanted to leave the hard drive on Monica?s lap and say, ?There is one thing that you didn?'t take into account,? and then he would go to Miriam and Pakamile and tomorrow he would ride to work on his Honda Benly and during lunch he would walk up St. George?s to Im-manuel the shoeshine man and play a game of chess with him between his cell-phone-talking, wealth-chasing clients and all the while they would good-naturedly mock the whites in Xhosa.
But right now he had two Z88 pistols and a flat hard drive in a blue sports bag standing between him and that life.
?And what do you do for a living?? asked the woman next to him.
He sighed. ?At the moment, I?m traveling,? he said.
How was he to get to Lusaka?
You wouldn'?t say that he was in the office by six every morning? here it was nearly half past eight in the evening and the director, in his early fifties, looked fresh, rested, and alert.
?I had an interesting call, Janina. This afternoon our Tiger assaulted a Parabat at Tempe.?
?Assaulted??
?Landed him in the hospital, and the commanding officer started phoning higher up. He wants justice.?
?I am sure there was reason for the fight, sir.?
?I am, too, Janina. I just want to keep you informed.?
?I appreciate that, sir.?
?Ask him about it when you see him.?
?I will.?
?Is that all, Mr. Director??
?That is all, Janina. I know you are busy.? And he smiled in a fatherly way. She hesitated a moment before turning away; she willed him to say something about the happenings in the Ops Room, he must bring it up so that she could assure him that everything was under control, but he just sat there with his smile.
She took the stairs, stopped halfway.
