Vortex

Ian shivered. My God, the man was hypnotic! Even though he didn’t understand the language, he could feel the raw power of Vorster’s voice and rhetoric. He glanced at Emily sitting pale and tense by his side. Did she feel it, too? His eyes slid down to where her hands were clenched so tightly that all the blood seemed to have drained out of them. Yes, she fell it—the appeal to a common heritage of sacrifice and of suffering.

The instinctive response to form a laager-to circle the wagons-in the face of overwhelming and alien forces.

He looked back toward the television. Vorster was still

speaking. He spoke more softly now, picking and choosing his words in a calm, dispassionate tone that seemed strangely at odds with his violent and bloody message.

“Well, we have words of our own for them-for these small-minded foreigners.

No fight is ever desirable. And no fight is ever pretty. But this struggle of ours is necessary. We are fighting for the very survival of our society, of our people. And we will not submit. We will not give up. We will not surrender our sovereign power while a single enemy, a single communist, or a single rebellious black is alive to menace our wives and our children.”

Vorster paused and stared grimly straight into the camera for a moment.

“Many of you may have heard the foreign charges that my government came to power illegally.” He snorted contemptuously.

“Illegally! What does that mean? What could it possibly mean in the circumstances our beloved country faced when I took office?”

Ian sat up straight in shock, scarcely able to believe that he’d heard

Vorster right. But the other man’s next words hammered the point home.

“Very well. I admit that extraordinary measures were used to resolve a dangerous political situation. The previous administration had embarked on a course that could only bring about South Africa’s ruin.”

Vorster lifted his massive, calloused hand toward the ceiling-as though he were seeking heaven’s approval for his actions. My fellows and I acted as patriots to restore a stable, right-thinking government. Outside the normal constitution, yes. But within the bounds of national need.

“Our efforts are not ended, and will not be ended, until we can guarantee a safe and prosperous society for every right-thinking citizen of South

Africa. We will spare no effort to reach that goal.” Vorster glowered into the camera.

“And if you are not with us, you are against us.”

He lowered his voice.

“And finally, to the United States and the other know-nothings who try to tell us what to do and what to think, you can get out of our affairs and stay out-until you accept us on our own terms. If we uttered a mere tenth of the lies and falsehoods about your countries that you’ve uttered about ours, your diplomats would scream in protest. Well, we do not scream, we act. Your ambassadors can all stay home until you are willing to speak reasonably and let us run our own affairs our own way.”

Vorster’s smile grew smug, unpleasantly near a sneer.

“Remember, you need us more than we need you. You need our gold, our diamonds, and all the precious metals that keep your industries alive. More than that, you need us to show you what no black has ever achieved-a stable and prosperous bulwark of civilization on the African continent.”

The camera zeroed in on his stern, implacable face and held the image for what seemed an eternity. Then the picture faded to black before cutting back to the South African Broadcasting Company’s main studio. Even the government’s handpicked anchormen looked shaken by what they’d just heard.

Ian reached out and snapped the set off. He needed peace and relative quiet to think this thing through. Vorster hadn’t even bothered to try denying his involvement in the Blue Train massacre. Instead, he’d practically thrown down a gauntlet-challenging anyone who dared to pick it up.

The question was, would anyone dare?

NOVEMBER 2-DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA

From the air, Durban was now a city of strange contrasts natural beauty, bustling commerce, and bloody, merciless violence.

To the northeast, the sun sparkled off the bright blue waters of the Indian

Ocean stretching unimpeded toward the far horizon. To the northeast and southwest, long foam-flecked waves rolling in from the ocean broke on spires of jagged gray rock just offshore or raced hissing up wide sandy beaches. Closer to the city center, dozens of ships crowded Durban’s deepwater port, South Africa’s largest. Oil tankers, container ships, bulk ore carriers, and rusting tramp steamers-all waiting a turn alongside the harbor’s crane lined marine terminal.

The violence was all ashore. Durban’s skyscrapers and streets were shrouded by a thick pall of oily black smoke