Vortex

Letting him see Knowles again wouldn’t expose them to any additional risk.

He swore one more time under his breath before looking up and catching his friend’s eye.

“All right, Sam, you win. You’ll be the one who gets to go pick up our prize.”

Ian just hoped there really was a prize for Knowles to collect.

MADDERFONTEIN MUNICIPAL REFUSE DUMP, JUST

OUTSIDE JOHANNESBURG

A chain link fence surrounded the Madderfontein Municipal Refuse Dump, enclosing mounds of broken furniture, rusting food tins, old tires, and all the other assorted scraps left by a wealthy civilization. A flat, featureless plain stretched northeast beyond the dump-a plain marked only by scattered small reservoirs and the distant, floodlit smokestacks of the

Klipfontein Organic Products Factory.

To the west, a multi lane highway, the N3 Motor Route, paralleled the dump. Glaring headlights revealed traffic moving north and south along the highway at high speed. To the east, only a few of Madderfontein’s separate, single family homes showed dim lights glowing from behind drawn

curtains. And barely one in three of the suburb’s streetlamps were lit, leaving dark pools of shadow at regular intervals.

A battered Ford Escort sat idling quietly in one of the patches of darkness-parked near a collection of scarred and rusting trash haulers and maintenance sheds used by the refuse dump’s work force. A man and a woman stood on either side of the Escort, their attention riveted on a car two hundred meters farther down the road.

Ian adjusted the focus on his binoculars, trying to make out more than the faint silvery outline of Knowles’s rented Mercedes as it sat under one of the few lit streetlamps. Nothing, damn it. The stretch of two-lane road running alongside the garbage dump was just too dark.

On the other side of the Escort, Emily stirred as the walkie talkie she held in her hand crackled into life.

“You guys awake? I think we’ve got company. Coming off the freeway ..

. “

Ian swiveled his binoculars right, scanning the exit ramp. There. The twin headlights of another car moving off the highway, fast at first but visibly slowing. He nodded abruptly. It had to be Muller.

Emily pressed the talk button.

“We see it, Sam. We’re ready. “

Ready. Sure they were, Ian thought bitterly. He’d had two hours to think of all the things that could go wrong with this secretive exchange. Two hours to realize just how much trouble they could be in if Muller didn’t come through with his end of the bargain or tried to double-cross them.

The other car, a Jaguar, turned left off the ramp and pulled alongside

Knowles’s Mercedes.

Emily’s walkie-talkie crackled again.

“It’s him. I can see him through the windshield.” Knowles sounded calm, with only the clipped endings of his words revealing any anxiety. Static hissed over the radio.

“He’s rolling his window down. Stand by.”

Ian tensed and stared hard through the binoculars. No good. He still couldn’t see anything but the bare shapes of the two parked cars. Seconds passed, dragging first into one minute and then into two. He could hear Emily whispering what he suspected was a prayer.

“I’m back-Did you miss me?” Beneath the banter, both of them could hear the relief in the cameraman’s voice.

“Transaction completed. Looks good so far.”

Thank God. Ian felt his back and neck muscles starting to un knot

Muller’s Jaguar pulled out from the curb, turned left again, and rolled away down the dimly lit Lombardy Link-heading for the ramp leading back onto the highway. Ian followed the Jag with his binoculars until it vanished among the stream of other cars and trucks moving north to

Pretoria. He turned and nodded to Emily.

She pressed the talk button again.

“It’s clear, Sam.”

“Far out! I’m on my way. Get ready to pop the champagne corks, ‘cause it looks like little Mrs. Knowles’s boy has hit the frigging jackpot this time! Names. Dates. The whole schmear! “

Ian laughed aloud, caught up in Knowles’s infectious enthusiasm.

Two hundred meters down the road, the Mercedes shifted gears and turned through a smooth half-circle to end up moving straight at them. Ian bent closer to the Escort’s open driver’s-side window.

“We’re almost ready to head for home, Matt. No fuss and no muss.”

Sibena smiled up at him from behind the wheel.

Suddenly the Mercedes braked and came to a complete stop while still twenty meters away.

Emily thumbed the walkie-talkie button.

“What’s wrong, Sam? Why have you stopped?”

Knowles sounded puzzled.

“I’m not really sure, There’s something rattling around in the back. I’m going to check it out. Hang on for a sec.” They both heard the click as his car door opened.

The Mercedes blew up in a spectacular rolling, billowing ball of fire-throwing pieces of glass, shards of metal, and shreds of rubber high into the air. For a split second, the explosion turned the night inside out-lighting up the surrounding landscape as though it were day.