Vortex

Before the flash faded away, a roaring wall of superheated air knocked fan off his feet and rolled him hard against the Escort’s underbody. From the other side of the car, Emily cried out in terror as the shock wave threw her to the ground. Fragments pattered down all around, spanging off the

Escort’s chassis and starring its windshield in half a dozen places.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the noise of the explosion died away-leaving only a crackling roar as the Mercedes burned. Ian and Emily climbed shakily to their feet and stared in horror at the flames leaping high into the night sky.

Sam Knowles was gone, and the evidence of Vorster’s treachery had gone with him.

ALONG THE N3 MOTOR ROUTE, NORTH OF

JOHANNESBURG

Erik Muller pulled onto the shoulder and braked sharply. Then he slid out from behind the wheel of his Jaguar and got out to smile in satisfaction at the funeral pyre blazing brightly to the south. He stood watching the flames with his hands planted squarely on his hips. Good riddance. The mind-numbing fear that had been his constant companion since he’d first seen the videotape was already vanishing.

A dark-colored sedan turned off the highway and halted ten meters behind his car. Its driver’s-side door popped open and a tall, burly man clambered out. He glanced briefly at the fiery glow staining the southern sky and then trudged through the loose gravel until he stood before Muller.

“A fine job, Reynders. Very professional. I’ll see that you get a commendation for this night’s work.” Muller resisted the temptation to pat the taller man on the shoulder.

Field Agent Paul Reynders acknowledged the compliment with a brief, almost bored nod. In truth, it hadn’t been a terribly difficult or even interesting mission. The heaped mounds of trash had provided more than a dozen perfect hiding places within easy reach of what he had been told was an ANC agent’s parked car.

He frowned.

“There was another car, Director, with two or three occupants. But no one else.” Reynders shrugged.

“Definitely amateurs. I detected no signs of any other backups or surveillance teams.”

He glanced again at the fire still burning fiercely.

“I hadn’t expected the second car, but I changed the timer to catch it inside the blast as well. We should have no more problems with these spies.” He said it flatly, absolutely convinced that he spoke the truth.

Unfortunately for Erik Muller, Reynders couldn’t have been more mistaken.

NETWORK STUDIOS, JOHANNESBURG

The studio’s offices, workrooms, and broadcast facilities lay wrapped in silence and darkness-apparently utterly empty, abandoned for the night by a fast-shrinking American staff. Even the South African security guards who normally patrolled the hallways guarding valuable electronic gear were safe at home in bed.

The lights flickered on in the main editing room and stayed on-revealing banks of racked VCRs, monitors, reel-to-reel machines, and the squat, white-eased shape of the studio’s computerized-imaging system. Ian shut the door leading into the main hallway and sagged back against the wall.

“We’re clear. “

Emily looked up at him, her cheeks still stained by new dried tears.

“For now.”

“Yeah. For now. ” Ian rubbed angrily at a smear of groundin dirt from the road on his own face. It served as a grim reminder of the night’s disaster.

“But when the police identify Sam’s body and trace that car, they’ll be down on us like a ton of bricks.”

Images of the burning Mercedes and of Muller’s car speeding away to safety flashed into his mind and he slammed his fists into the wall, making both Emily and Matthew Sibena jump.

“Goddamnit! I should have known! I should have known that bastard was giving in too easily!”

He took a deep breath, fighting for control.

“We have a

day or so before things really start to cave in. Sam wasn’t carrying any ID tonight.” He looked somberly at Emily and Sibena.

“I’ll call my friend at the embassy. He should be able to rig up some kind of temporary papers for the two of you. With luck, we can be on a plane out of this fucking country before they start looking for us.”

Sibena nodded gratefully, but Emily turned away without saying anything.

She moved to the console where Knowles had spent so many of his waking hours splicing and re splicing tapes, bringing structure and theme out of a confusion of recorded sights and sounds.

Ian watched her quietly, praying that her Afrikaner stubborn streak wasn’t about to erupt. They’d gambled and lost. Now it was time to back away before any more of them lost their lives. He felt his hands ball into fists. Damn. He didn’t want to leave either. He wanted to nail Muller’s head on a pole-personally. But there was a world of difference between wanting something and being able to make it happen.

“Ian!” Emily’s voice sliced through his increasingly morose thoughts.

“Look at this!”

She held out a single sheet of notepaper.

“I found it there.

She pointed to a pile of videocassettes stacked neatly atop the computer casing.