Vortex

That was when Ian had screwed up. Prompted by the moderator, he’d practically sunk his teeth in the anchor-citing case after case when the man’s own well-known political opinions had shown up in the way stories were reported. It had been an effective performance, one that earned him a rousing ovation from the studio audience and a withering glare from the anchor,

He hadn’t thought any more about it for weeks. Not until his promised promotion to Capitol Hill vanished, replaced by a sudden assignment as a foreign correspondent based in Cape Town.

That was when he realized just how badly he’d pissed off the network brass. South Africa was widely regarded as a graveyard for ambitious journalists. When the country was quiet, you didn’t have anything to report. And when things heated up, the South African security services often clamped down-making it almost impossible to get any dramatic footage out of the country. Even worse, the current government seemed to be following a policy of unusual restraint. That meant no pictures of police whipping anti apartheid demonstrators or firing shotguns at black labor-union activists. The result: practically zero airtime for reporters trying to work in South Africa. And airtime, the number of minutes or seconds you occupied on America’s television screens, was the scale on which TV reporters were judged.

Ian knew how far he’d slipped on that scale. Since arriving in Cape Town nearly six months ago, he’d filed dozens of stories over the satellite links to New York. And he’d shown up in America’s living rooms for a grand total of precisely four minutes and twenty-three seconds. That was oblivion, TV-style.

“Hey, Sheffield! You alive in there, boyo? You ready to go?”

Ian looked up, startled out of his depressing reverie by Knowles’s voice.

With pieces of camera gear and sound equipment strapped to his back or dangling from both hands, his technician looked more like a pack mule than a man.

“Ready and willing, though not very able, Sam.” Ian reached over and plucked a couple of carrying cases out of Knowles’s overloaded hands.

“Let me take those. I might need you without a hernia sometime.”

The two men started walking back to their car, a dented Ford station wagon. It had been another wasted trip on another wasted day. Ian moodily kicked a piece of loose gravel out of his path, sending it skittering down the avenue past the highly polished shoes of an unsmiling, gray-jacketed policeman.

“Oh, shit,” Knowles muttered under his breath.

The policeman stared coldly at the two Americans as they came closet and held out his left hand.

“Papers!”

Both Ian and his cameraman awkwardly set their gear down and fished through crowded pockets for passports and work permits. Then they stood waiting as the South African idly leafed through their documents, a sneer plastered across his narrow face.

At last he looked up at them.

“You are journalists’?”

Ian could hear the contempt in the man’s voice and felt his own temper rising. He kept his words clipped.

“That’s right. American journalists.

Is there some kind of problem?”

The policeman glared at him for several seconds.

“No, Meneer Sheffield, there is no problem. You are free to go. For the moment. But I suggest you show more respect in the future.”

Ian reached for their passports and permits and saw them flutter to the ground as the South African let them fall beyond his fingers. Months of petty slights and mounting frustration came to a boil in a single instant. For a split second he saw the policeman’s body as a succession of targets. First the solar plexus. Next that arrogant, perfectly shaped nose. Ian’s hands curled, ready to strike. He’d demonstrate what he’d learned in two years of self-defense classes back in the States.

Then he noticed a triumphant gleam in the other man’s eyes. Strange.

Why’d he look so happy? Rational thought returned, overriding anger. The bastard wanted to provoke a fight. And granting him his wish would mean trouble. Big trouble.

Instead, Ian knelt without a word and picked up their scattered papers.

Getting deported was not the way he wanted to leave this country.

As they unlocked the station wagon, Knowles risked a glance back over his shoulder.

“That son of a bitch is still watching us. “

Without looking, Ian slid behind the Fiesta’s wheel.

“Penis envy, probably. “

His cameraman laughed softly and shut the door.

“Cheer up, Ian. If the government ever lets thugs like Little Boy

Nazi there oft’ the leash again, you’ll have plenty of blood and gore to report on.”

As he pulled away from the curb, Ian studied the rigid, uniformed figure still staring after them. Knowles might just be right. For some reason that didn’t make him feel much better.

MAY 29-THE MINISTRY OF LAW AND ORDER, PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA