Vortex

by Larry Bond

  Kruger stopped reading. My God, he thought, this is madness. Absolute madness. But he couldn’t ignore the excitement bubbling up within his dismay. No professional soldier could have remained unmoved. The briefing binder he held in his hand described the single largest South African military operation planned since the end of World War II. More men, more vehicles, and more firepower than he had ever imagined would be assembled for a single purpose. In a way it was bloody ironic. For months he’d been complaining about the ANC sanctuaries inside Namibia. But he’d certainly never dreamed anyone would seriously propose trying to solve the guerrilla threat with a full-scale conventional invasion.

  Drums and bugles echoed in the innermost recesses of his mind-accompanying visions of long columns of tanks and APCs rolling forward through dust and smoke. He looked up from the operations plan.

  The faces of the officers around him showed the same odd mix of disbelief and pride.

  Kruger shook his head. Real war was never glorious. Bugles could never be heard over the screams of the wounded or the roar of the guns. And yet He felt Coetzee touch his arm.

  “Well, Henrik? What do you think of our leader’s little scheme, eh?”

  Kruger looked at his friend.

  “Tell me true, Deneys… has the

  President lost his reason? We’ll. have to mobilize a large part of the

  Citizen Force to assemble all the units for this thing. What’s going to happen to the factories and mines while half the skilled laborers and middle managers are off being soldiers? What idiot has convinced him that we can carry this out without paying a horrible price?”

  “Hsst! Lower your voice, Henrik.” Coetzee somehow looked suddenly older.

  He glanced quickly to either side, making sure that no other officers were in earshot.

  “Do you remember Duncan Grant, Andries van Rensburg, or

  Jan Kriel?”

  Kruger nodded slowly, taken aback by Coetzee’s sudden fear. He knew all three of them well. An image of big, black bearded van Rensburg leading his men in a madcap charge against a Cuban machinegun position inside

  Angola popped into his mind. Now there was a soldier with guts. And the other two were equally brave and equally competent officers.

  Kruger scanned the auditorium again, checking faces more carefully.

  “I’m surprised they’re not here today.”

  Coetzee looked grim.

  “They’re gone, Henrik. Forced out of the Army. Along with several others.”

  “Good God!”

  Heads turned to look in their direction and Kruger spoke more softly.

  “What the hell for? Those three were some of the best men we had. And with this craziness coming up”he shook the black binder outlining

  Operation Nimrod’we’re going to need every experienced combat leader we can find.”

  “True.” Coetzee’s voice was flat, apparently drained of all feeling. Only the closest of his friends could possibly have recognized the contempt dripping from every word.

  “But it seems that Grant, van Rensburg, and

  Kriel each made the mistake of voicing their concerns about this plan concocted by the President and General de Wet.”

  “So?” Kruger was puzzled. The SADF’s officer corps

  prided itself on its professionalism and honesty. It had never been known as a haven for boot lickers-despite the occasional fool such as de Wet.

  Now it was Coetzee’s turn to look surprised.

  “My God, Henrik. You have been out in the field for too long a time, man. Things have changed since

  Haymans’s death… and not for the better, either. Anybody who doesn’t click his heels and mouth the right slogans gets labeled a ‘defeatist malcontent’ and shoved into early retirement.

  “So if you want to keep your battalion, you’d best keep your head down, your mouth shut, soldier on, and hope the voters throw this gang out soon. After all, we still have our duty, right? They can’t take that away from you unless you let them. Kloar?”

  Kruger nodded, not sure that he could easily follow Coetzee’s well-intended advice. Keeping quiet had never been one of his strong points. How long could an honorable man serve a government that treated brave men such as van Rensburg and the others so shabbily? Or carry out national security policies so unlikely to serve the long-term interests of the nation?

  General de Wet’s precise, perfectly modulated voice broke into his internal debate.

  “I hope all of you have taken the time to page through this operations order.”

  Heads nodded around the crowded auditorium.

  “Good. Then we can move on to the details.” De Wet flipped to the next page of his prepared text and looked up at his assembled officers.

  “I

  shall not bother to bore you with the higher strategy behind this decision. I believe that Nimrod’s basic outline is as clear as it is bold.”

  The general smiled thinly.

  “Indeed, gentlemen, we are fortunate to serve a president and cabinet so versed in military matters and so dedicated to the survival of our nation. “

  Kruger noticed with some interest that fewer heads nodded this time.

  Evidently, some of the other officers hadn’t been swept up by the prevailing determination to “get along by going along—no matter what the cost and no matter how idiotic the policy. Perhaps there was some hope left for the Army.

  Despite his doubts, Kruger paid close attention as de Wet began outlining specific assignments, objectives, and timetables. Coetzee was right.

  Whatever he might think of the direction being taken by Vorster’s government, he was still a soldier with a sworn duty to obey legitimate orders issued by South Africa’s legitimate rulers. There would be time enough later to debate the rights or wrongs of this Operation Nimrod. For the next several weeks he and his fellow commanders would have their hands full just trying to make sure their men were ready for battle.

  He only hoped that Pretoria’s shortsighted desire for vengeance against little Namibia wouldn’t cost too many of them their lives.

  JULY 30-IN THE NORTHERN TRANSVAAL, NEAR

  PIETERSBURG

  The stars were out in force-shining cold and sharp through the high veld’s dry, thin air.

  Torches guttered from metal stands scattered around the brick-lined patio, creating a curiously medieval atmosphere. Acrid tobacco smoke rose from half a dozen burning cigarettes and mingled with the aroma of slowly roasting meat. Small groups of casually dressed middle-aged men clustered around the central barbecue pit. Their low, guttural voices and occasional hard-edged laughter carried far through the still, silent night.

  Emily van der Heijden frowned as she leaned over the tiled kitchen countertop, filling glasses with soft drinks and lemon flavored mineral water. Even as a child, she’d thought her father’s friends were a rather dull, coarse, and unthinking bunch. Nothing in the snatches of conversation she heard drifting up from the patio changed that impression.

  She’d already heard enough to make her ill. These men, most of them now high-ranking government officials, seemed callous almost beyond belief.

  Contemptible words such as kaffir rolled too easily off their tongues as they casually discussed the desirability of “shooting a few thousand more of

  the most troublesome black-assed bastards to cow the rest.” All had nodded sagely at the idea. One had even gone so far as to claim that “there’s nothing the black man respects more than a firm hand and a touch of the whip.”

  Emily paled with anger and slammed the glass she’d just filled down hard on a circular serving tray. Liquid slopped over the edge and stained her sleeve and white, full-length apron.

  “Here now, mevrou. You’d better calm down and wipe that ugly sneer off your face before you embarrass your poor father. You wouldn’t want to do that, would you?” Malice edged every word.

  Angrier still, Emily turned her head to look at the dour old woman standing beside her at the coun
ter. Tall and stick-thin beneath her shapeless black dress, Beatfix Viljoen had been her father’s devoted housekeeper for as long as Emily could remember. And the two women had been enemies for every hour of every day of that time.

  Emily despised the domineering older woman’s ceaseless efforts to make her into a “proper” Afrikaner woman-a woman concerned only with the wishes of her husband, the health of her children, and the written, inflexible word of God. In turn, the housekeeper resented Emily’s ability to go her own way, unbound by convention or propriety.

  Their dealings over the years had been a series of cold, calculating, and venomous confrontations-exchanges wholly unmarked by any warmth or friendly feeling. As her widowed father’s only child, Emily had generally come out ahead in these skirmishes.

  All that had changed since her frantic phone call to get Ian out of jail and her enforced return home. Marius van der Heijden had been bitterly angry about his daughter’s “sinful” liaison with the American reporter-someone he referred to only as “that godless and immoral

  Uitlander.” Emily still wasn’t sure which angered him more: her involvement with Ian, or the possibility that it could be used against him by one of his political rivals. It scarcely mattered. The hard fact was that his anger had put Beatfix Viljoen in the catbird seat.

  It wasn’t something the housekeeper ever let her forget.

  “Well, mevrou? Am I not right?”

  Emily saw the eager look in the other woman’s eyes and bit down the ill-tempered reply she’d been about to make. Quarreling with Beatrix wouldn’t help her escape this trap she’d put herself in to save Ian.

  Instead, she quietly picked up her loaded tray, turned, and walked out onto the dim, torchlit patio.

  Silently fuming, she orbited through the separate groups of men-stopping only to allow them to pluck drinks off the tray she held in both hands.

  As always, their ability to ignore her was infuriating. Oh, they were courteous enough in a ponderous, patronizing way. But none of them bothered to hide their view of her as nothing more than a woman-as a member of the sex ordained by God for marriage, child rearing housework, and nothing more.

  She stopped circling and stood beneath the fragrant, sweeping branches of an acacia tree planted long ago by her grandfather. Her tray held more empty than full glasses, but she was reluctant to leave the patio’s relative quiet. Going back to the kitchen meant enduring another verbal slashing from Beaxtrix’s knife-sharp tongue.

  Emily took a deep breath of the fresh, cool night air, seeking refuge in the peaceful vista spreading outward from the torchlit patio. It was the one part of the Transvaal that she had missed in Cape Town. Her father’s farmhouse sat on the brow of a low hill overlooking a shallow, open valley. Gentle, grassy slopes rolled down to a meandering, treelined stream-brimming during the summer rains, but dry now. Happier memories of her carefree childhood rose in Emily’s mind, washing away some of the frustrations and tension of the present.

  “I tell you, man, the leader is a genius. Practically a prophet touched by God himself.”

  “You speak true, Piet.”

  Emily stiffened. The voices were coming from the other side of the tree.

  Damn them! Was there nowhere she could go to find a moment’s peace? She stayed still, hidden from

  view by the acacia’s low, overhanging branches-hoping the two men, whoever they were, would wander off as quickly as they’d apparently come.

  Cigarette smoke curled around the tree.

  “You remember the bra ai at his home last month? Two weeks before those kaffir swine killed Haymans and his own pack of traitors?”

  The other man laughed.

  “Of course, I do. I tell you, Piet, at first I thought the leader had been smoking some of his field hands’ dagga.

  Telling us to be ready for great change, for our days of power, and all that. But now I see that he was inspired, given the gift of foretelling like our own modern-day Solomon.”

  Emily’s stomach churned. Karl Vorster … a prophet? The very thought seemed blasphemous. But could there be a horrifying truth behind the two men’s sanctimonious ranting? Just as the symptoms of a deadly illness could be cloaked by those of another, less serious disease? Until now, she’d viewed Vorster’s rise to power as simply the grotesque side effect of the ANC’s triggerhappy attack on the Blue Train. But perhaps that was too simple a view. Had Vorster known of the ambush in advance?

  My God, Emily thought, dazed. If that was true … the events of the past several weeks flickered through her mind -each taking on a newer, more sinister significance. The swift retribution for the train attack.

  Vorster’s meteoric assumption of power. The immediate proclamation of various emergency decrees and punitive measures against South Africa’s blacks-measures that could only have been drafted days or weeks before news of the Blue Train ambush reached Pretoria. It all fit. She tasted something salty in her mouth and realized suddenly that she’d bitten her own lip without being aware of it.

  The first man spoke again, quieter this time so that Emily had to strain to make out his words.

  “Only one thing troubles me, Hennie. I cannot bring myself to trust all of those our leader allows around himself.

  Especially… “

  “That pretty boy Muller?” the other finished for him.

  “Va. That one will be trouble for us all, you mark my words, Hennie.”

  Light flared around the tree trunk for a split second as the other man struck a match and touched it to a new cigarette.

  “Also true, Piet. And van der Heijden agrees with us. But what can we do about it? So long as

  Muller does the dirty work, he’ll have the leader’s ear and confidence.

  After all, no man throws away an ax that’s still sharp.”

  “Then we must sharpen our own axes, my friend. And I know just the neck

  I’d like to use them on….”

  Their voices faded as the two men sidled away from the tree, returning to the larger group standing around the open air barbecue pit.

  After they’d gone, Emily stayed motionless for several minutes, lost in thought. Muller … the name was familiar. She’d heard it pronounced contemptuously by her father. And also by Ian. But who was this Muller?

  Clearly some kind of official in Vorster’s old Ministry of Law and Order.

  An official disliked by his peers and apparently heavily involved in

  Vorster’s “dirty work.” Just the kind of man who would know whether or not Vorster had had advance warning of the ANC’s plans to attack the Blue

  Train.

  Her hands closed tighter around the tray. She had to find some way to get word of what she suspected to Ian. He would know how to turn the fragments she’d gathered into a coherent, supportable news report. Her heart pounded with excitement. Why, this could turn out to be the big break Ian had been searching for so desperately. If it could be proved, such a story was bound to create the biggest news flash in South Africa’s recent history.

  Her excitement grew as she realized that it could have even more far-reaching consequences-political consequences. Few things were more abhorrent to Afrikaners than treachery. So how would her fellow countrymen react to the discovery that their new president was nothing more than a black hearted back stabber

  Emily scarcely noticed when Beatrix Viljoen tracked her down under the acacia tree and dragged her back to the kitchen.

  CHAPTER

  Capital Moves

  AUGUST 3-STATE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER,

  PRETORIA

  Maps and charts covered the walls of the small, windowless meeting room.

  Each showed a separate piece of the elaborate preparations for Operation

  Nimrod-South Africa’s planned reconquest of Namibia. And each had played a part in the defense minister’s final briefing for Vorster and the members of his State Security Council.

  For two hours, the men seated around the large rectangular table had b
een bombarded with facts, figures, and freely flowing military terms. Phase lines. Airlift requirements and resupply capabilities. Mobilization tables.

  Free-fire zones. All had been woven into a single sean-dess portrait of impending and inevitable victory.

  As Constand Heitman, the minister of defense, took his seat, Karl Vorster’s eyes flickered back and forth, scanning the faces of his subordinates. This was the first time most of them had heard the details of his plans for

  Namibia. He expected their reactions to be instructive.

  He nodded his thanks to Heitman and turned to face the rest of the

  Council.

  “Well, gentlemen? Are there any further questions?”

  One of those seated at the far end of the table started to lean forward to speak and then stopped.

  “Come, Helmoed, what troubles you? Have you seen some flaw in our proposal?” Vorster’s voice was deceptively calm.

  The man, Helmoed Malherbe, the minister of industries and commerce, swallowed hard. No one was ever eager to appear to oppose any of the

  State President’s cherished plans. A month in power had already shown

  Vorster’s unwillingness to tolerate those who disagreed with him.

  Malherbe of eared his throat.

  “Not a flaw, Mr. President. Nothing like that. It is just a small concern. “

  “Out with it then, man.” Vorster’s polite facade cracked slightly.

  Malherbe bobbed his head submissively, obviously rattled.

  “Yes, Mr.

  President. It’s the scale of Citizen Force mobilization this operation requires. If Nimrod takes longer than planned, the prolonged absence of these men from our factories could have a serious impact on our economy.”

  Vorster snorted.

  “Is that all? Very well, Malherbe. Your concern is noted.”

  He looked at the others around the table.

  “So, gentlemen. You have heard the industries minister? If the kaffirs can hold back our tanks with their rifles for a month or two, we may have to ask our people to tighten their belts a little. Terrible, eh?”

  Chuckles greeted his heavy-handed attempt at humor. Malherbe sat redfaced, shamed into silence.