The major stepped around the wheelchair and produced seven copies of a paper and handed them out, making eye contact with each of the recipients.
‘These are your orders for Operation Samson. You will be asked to return here in three weeks’ time with your suggestions. Each of you will be required to present an operation to bring down a stadium during the soccer World Cup next year.’ He paused to let the magnitude of the operation sink in. ‘The stadium will be brought down when it is filled to capacity.’
The major stepped back behind the wheelchair and the general took over. ‘You were brought here from the seven regions in South Africa where the World Cup stadia are to be built or refurbished. We want to make a statement with maximum publicity, when the whole world will be watching. Everything clear so far?’
‘Yes, General,’ the men around him said in unison.
‘Any questions?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The youngest man in the semicircle was the first to speak. He was new, one who had been brought in from outside the organisation especially for this operation. ‘If we want maximum damage and maximum effect, shouldn’t we eliminate from our planning, right from the outset, the smaller stadia?’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘It seems to me, General, that Port Elizabeth, Rustenburg, Pietersburg and Nelspruit are too small for our purposes. There will be neither maximum casualties nor maximum publicity.’
‘Sir?’ Another hand went up. ‘Did you mean maximum casualties or maximum damage?’
The major answered. ‘Maximum casualties. The damage is a given if you bring the whole stadium down, which is the plan, remember.’
‘Are we agreed that PE, Pietersburg, Rustenburg and Nelspruit should be eliminated from the outset?’ the general asked. ‘Does anyone have a problem with that?’
The major did. ‘Security during the construction phase and competition will be strict, and the lesser cities may well hold advantages for us in that respect.’
The general overruled his concern. ‘There won’t be much for us to gain in bringing down one of the smaller stadia. This is a major operation for us, and we want the maximum return for the risk and our effort. Are we agreed thus far?’
There was a murmur of assent but no one spoke.
He continued. ‘I think we’re agreed then that those four are eliminated.’ He waited for his men to acknowledge the decision. When they did, he asked, ‘Any further suggestions at this stage?’
The new member spoke again. ‘Sir, some of the bigger stadia are merely being refurbished.’ He raised a finger for each. ‘Bloemfontein, Pretoria and Ellis Park. And I think the one in Soweto. Their designs are old and it would be near impossible to bring them down, as the major has put it, unless we use massive amounts of explosives, which is not really feasible.’
‘Why should that be?’ one of the men asked.
‘Because those old ones are solid concrete and it’s almost impossible to knock them down.’
‘Which leaves what?’ the major asked.
‘It leaves us with the new Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, the stadium outside Johannesburg, and the new stadium in Durban. They are the ones with adventurous and futuristic designs, which will make it easier to bring them down.’
‘And since they are still to be constructed, we’ll have an opportunity to put our men and materials in place long before the opening game,’ the member from Cape Town said.
‘Good. I like that kind of thinking,’ the major said. ‘And they are more likely to be filled to capacity at all stages of the competition,’ he added.
They waited for the general’s response. He looked old and tired, and it was reflected in his voice when he spoke. ‘Break them into teams of two with the new man to coordinate everything. We want a plan for each of those in three weeks.’
‘Why do we need another operation, General?’ one of the men asked. ‘Operation Virus has served us well and it’s still running strongly.’
‘We’ve never put all our eggs in one basket,’ the general explained. ‘We can’t afford to sit back and wait. We have to be proactive.’
The men looked like they needed more convincing, so he told them more than he might have otherwise. ‘We have suffered several setbacks. Notwithstanding our best efforts, the homeland system, started long before most of you were born, did not produce the population shift we anticipated. We were three to one when it started, but it quickly climbed to five to one. By the time we started Operation Virus, it was seven to one.’
‘We are going backwards then,’ one of the men said.
‘There are reasons for that,’ the major said, waiting for the general’s nod before continuing. ‘They were out-breeding us,’ he said. ‘And too many of our own people have left. That changed the ratio significantly.’
‘But we’re still going backwards,’ the speaker insisted. ‘It’s ten to one now.’
‘We came close to destroying their workforce with Operation Virus,’ the general said, ‘but we hadn’t counted on seven million illegal immigrants streaming in to take their place. Of those, three million are Zimbabwean citizens.’
‘We should have shot Mugabe long ago,’ one of the younger members said.
‘We tried,’ the major said. ‘God knows, we tried.’
‘Well,’ the young man said, ‘I don’t know how blowing up a football stadium is going to help the figures. It seems to me that a hundred thousand this way or that is not going to make much difference.’
‘This operation is not aimed at the fifty or sixty thousand in the stadium at the time, young man,’ the general said. ‘It’s about the economy. We need some subtlety, like with Operation Virus. We’ll ruin the tourist industry, and no foreigner will invest his money here after this. Also, with the money running out, the illegal immigrants will turn their eyes north and invade Europe instead.’
That settled the issue.
‘I’m tired now,’ the general said. ‘Take me inside, Major. You take over.’
‘You heard what the general has said,’ the major concluded. ‘Teams of two for each of the stadia. Cape Town stays with Cape Town, and so on. Three stadia, three plans.’
‘What about funding, sir?’ someone asked. ‘It’ll cost a lot of money to blow up a whole stadium.’
‘We’ll concern ourselves with funding once we’ve decided on the finer details of the operation. We always assumed Samson was going to require some extraordinary funding, but you don’t need to worry. We have the funds in place. Don’t limit the scope of your plans in any way. Assume you have the necessary funding in place.’
‘You are good men doing important work,’ the general said. ‘Let’s make this one special.’
‘All papers on the fire,’ the major said, and watched as each copy of his presentation went up in flames. Then he pushed the general’s wheelchair inside.
It would take a further three rounds of drinks before the coals were ready for the meat, but by then the seven men chosen for Operation Samson had already come up with a number of alternatives. As the alcohol loosened their inhibitions, the discussion became more animated and the plans more outlandish.
Crocodiles, those silent hunters, patrolled their domain in the Great Letaba River close by.
Lying in his bed inside the hunter’s lodge, the general thought of the man they had asked to shoot Mugabe many years before. The man who had fallen into the habit of refusing to carry out orders.
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April 2009 31
The new man proved to be a third-generation Third Force member. His grandfather had stood trial with Robey Leibbrandt and had received a medium-term prison sentence for his role in Leibbrandt’s crime spree. His grandmother was the one who had prepared Robey Leibbrandt’s meals in her family’s house in the foothills of the Soutpansberg. She took his provisions to him every second day. She had gone up the mountain on horseback, and had watched when Leibbrandt carved a swastika into the sandstone of the mountain. And she had carried his i
nstructions – orders, he had called them – to his followers in Pretoria and elsewhere.
The other members of the Operation Samson task team quickly warmed to the young man. Paul Berrangé was a surveyor and a member of the firm which had been awarded the contract to conduct the necessary surveys during the construction phase of the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. It was his function to ensure that every construction component was aligned properly to ensure a proper fit.
The men were gathered around a table in the lodge. The general sat in his wheelchair at the head with the major at his right-hand side. Three scale models stood on the table. There was one of the new Green Point Stadium, Soccer City Stadium and the Moses Mabhida Stadium.
Berrangé was respectfully deferent when he made his presentation after the Cape Town and Johannesburg proposals had been explained. They were very similar. Large amounts of explosives would be required to bring the stadia down and there were the same advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage was that implementation would, in theory at least, be simple, and that the explosives could be stolen from any of the mining companies which abound on the Reef where security is lax. The cost of execution would be low. The problem was that there was likely to be a strong security contingent at all stadia during the competition. That would make it impossible to place the explosives during the World Cup.
‘How many men would you need to place the explosives?’ the major asked. ‘From what I’ve seen on television, you need a whole team of experts to set off the blast in such a way that everything collapses at once, or in a predetermined sequence.’
The Johannesburg and Cape Town team leaders looked at each other and then spoke at the same time. ‘About twelve,’ the one said. ‘Sixteen,’ said the other.
‘Let’s hear what Durban has to offer,’ the general said.
‘I think ours will be easier to bring down,’ Berrangé said, pointing at the scale model.
It was an intricate design, with an arch and cables holding up a Teflon membrane roof, all tied together by means of the cables to inner and outer compression rings. The design called for such varied and complicated construction techniques that, instead of one contractor, a number of different contractors had to be commissioned to do the work. The outer columns onto which the outer compression ring was to be tied were to be manufactured of steel-reinforced concrete by a local contractor.
‘It would be easy to penetrate the security there,’ Berrangé said. ‘But I have a better idea. One which would do justice to the name of our operation.’
‘Explain,’ the general said. ‘Just in broad outline.’
The arch was to stand 105 metres above the pitch and was to be constructed of fifty-six individual 5×5-metre steel hollow-box sections. Their manufacture had been given to a construction company in Hamburg, where the individual items were to be preassembled in the yard to test accuracy before taking the whole thing apart and shipping the individual sections to the construction site. An overall tolerance of less than 10 mm was allowed since the arch was to be erected from both ends to meet in the middle. ‘Any variance larger than 10 mm would mean that the last piece could not be fitted into position,’ Berrangé explained.
‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to penetrate the security in Hamburg because they won’t be expecting any trouble there,’ he added.
‘Yes, that’s what the Americans thought of Hamburg and see what happened to them,’ one of the other members said. ‘Mohamed Atta and his colleagues did all their plotting right there under their noses.’
Berrangé smiled dutifully and continued. The steel cables, their stainless steel connectors and tensioners to tie them to the compression rings – Berrangé leaned across the table and touched each item as he spoke – as well as the membrane were to be manufactured off site by another overseas contractor and assembled by them on site after the arch had been completed. ‘These people,’ he said, ‘use technology so sophisticated that they are the envy of the stadium manufacturers in the States and for that reason have excellent security. They are extremely protective of the proprietary technology. We won’t be able to get anywhere near their plant.
‘The thing,’ he said, ‘is that the arch, the compression rings, the steel cables and their connections and the membrane roof are all to be tied together in such a way that each component not only supports the whole structure, but is necessary to its integrity. If one component fails, the whole thing will collapse.’
‘Can such a failure be engineered?’ the general asked. ‘And if so, how?’
Berrangé had grown in confidence since the task force’s first meeting three weeks earlier. He now spoke with the assurance of a man who not only knew what he was doing, but knew that he was more knowledgeable than the men around him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We place explosives – there is one on the market that looks like steel and has the consistency of steel – with a small detonator coupled with a tiny radio transmitter inside some of the box sections of the arch and set it off by remote control at a moment of our choosing.’ He looked up and his eyes invited questions. It was clear that he didn’t expect a challenge. His plan was that good.
‘What will happen? Talk us through the sequence of events.’
‘We set it off during the match. The box sections will disintegrate under the force of the simultaneous explosions. The arch will collapse by its sheer weight – more than 2,600 tons – pulling the outer columns – a hundred and two of them at 50 to 60 tons each – inwards so that they will collapse into the stands with all the glass and aluminium facades between the columns.’ Berrangé indicated the external feature of the stadium: illuminated sheets of glass spanning the entire circumference of the stadium, giving it the appearance of an oval-shaped cake dish.
‘The parts of the structure which don’t collapse under their own weight will be pulled inwards so that everything would land on the seating area. Except the arch. The arch will fall straight down onto the pitch.’
‘And the players,’ someone said.
Someone’s cellphone rang and they took time to consider what the Berrangé proposal entailed. There were no dissenting voices.
‘When and where do we place the devices?’ the major asked when the cellphone had been silenced.
‘We have only one opportunity, and that is at the factory in Hamburg, during the manufacturing process,’ Berrangé replied.
‘That won’t be easy to achieve.’
‘It’s the only way.’
‘When?’
‘The semifinal slated for Durban would be a good time,’ Berrangé said. ‘The stadium will be filled to capacity, with more than sixty thousand spectators, two of the four best teams in the competition and all of the Fifa bosses, the local, national and international political leaders in the VIP stands, and about a billion viewers – so they estimate – worldwide watching on live television and listening to the commentary in more than a hundred languages.’
‘Your plan looks good in theory, but it’s impractical,’ the major suggested. ‘How will we disguise the device so that they don’t find it during the numerous quality checks they are bound to have in a construction project of this magnitude? Fifa will have its own inspectors. The chief engineer will fly over from here at various stages during the manufacturing to see for himself that everything is sound. Everything will have to be signed off step by step for each section of the arch. There is just no way that your device will go undetected during all those checks.’
‘We haven’t overlooked that, Major,’ Berrangé responded with a slight smile. ‘The arch design is so important that there is a whole team of surveyors whose job it is to see that every component making up the entire stadium – from the columns to the arch, the pitch and even the platforms on which the seats are to be placed – has been manufactured to specification and placed on site in precisely the correct position. To be able to do that, they place survey points – that’s what they call them – on various components during the process of manufacture. I emphasise,
during manufacture. And that’s where Hamburg comes in. There will be a survey point on each section of the arch. We can disguise the devices to look like survey points.’
‘We’ve done a Hamburg operation before,’ the major said. ‘We burned our bridges there and it won’t be easy to get back in.’ He thought for a while before he asked, ‘The manufacture of the sections of the arch will involve steelwork and lots of it, won’t it?’
Berrangé nodded.
‘We may have a contact there,’ the major said. He was looking at the men around the table but addressing the general behind him. ‘But it won’t be easy to persuade him to work for us a second time when we still owe him money from the previous operation.’
The general intervened. ‘It’s a very good plan. We just have to make it work.’
‘But how, General?’ the major asked.
‘We have money in Hamburg, or have you forgotten? Lots of money. And with money, you can achieve anything.’
‘It won’t be easy to gain access to that money,’ the major argued. ‘The last time we tried, the bank refused. When we tried to intercept the account holder, he eluded us at the airport.’ He was careful not to mention the name. There was no reason for the others to know.
‘There are ways to make him compliant. It is our money and he can have no objection to cooperating with us.’
‘With all due respect, General,’ the major said, ‘it seems to me that you’ve forgotten that his wife and children were killed by our operatives, and that the man is as stubborn as a mule.’
‘Even a mule can be made to obey. It’s up to you to make it work.’ The general pointed at the model of the Moses Mabhida Stadium. ‘It is a good plan, an elegant one.’ He pointed at the major. ‘It’s up to you to make it work. Find a way. And be quick. From what Berrangé has said, they will start the manufacture of the box sections soon.’
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