Vortex

“I want that shot in because one of his cabinet ministers was missing. Somebody important, too. Somebody who obviously isn’t much interested in showing a united front on this talks thing.”

Knowles smiled broadly.

“Let me guess. That well-known friend of the international press and all-around humanitarian, the minister of law and order. Am I right?”

“You get an A for today, Sam.” Ian matched his smile.

“Can you dig up some good, juicy file footage of Vorster for me? Something suitably ominous. You know, shots of him glowering in the back of a long black limousine. Or surrounded by armed security troops. That kind of stuff.”

He waited while Knowles jotted down a quick note and went on, “Then we can weave those pictures in at the wrapupKnowles finished the sentence for him.

“Thus leaving our viewers with the unpleasant, but real, impression that these talks aren’t necessarily going to lead straight to the promised land of peace. “

“Right again.” Ian clapped his cameraman on the, shoulder.

“Keep this up and I’ll think you’re after my job.”

Knowles made a face.

“No thanks. You’re the on-air ‘talent.” I prefer being an unknown gofer. You can keep all the headaches of dealing with the network brass for yourself. All I ask is the chance to shoot some interesting film without too much interference. “

Ian shrugged and turned to leave.

“You may get your wish. I’ve got a feeling that this country’s finally coming out of hibernation. “

KEPPEL HOUSE, CAPE TOWN

Every table in the small dining room was occupied-each fit by a single, flickering candle. Voices rose and fell around the darkened room, the harsh, clipped accents of Afrikaans mingling with half a dozen variants of English. White-coated, dark-skinned waiters bustled through the crowd, hands full of trays loaded down with steaming platters of fresh seafood or beef. Mouth-watering aromas rose from every platter, making it easy to understand why Keppel House never lacked customers.

But Ian Sheffield had scarcely tasted the food he’d eaten or the wine he’d sipped. He didn’t even notice the other diners filling the room.

Instead, his eyes were firmly fixed on the

woman seated directly across the table. He was sure that he’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

Emily van der Heijden looked up from her wineglass and smiled at him-a smile that stretched all the way from her wide, generous mouth to her bright blue eyes. She set her glass down and delicately brushed a strand of shoulder-length, sun-brightened auburn hair back from her face.

“You are staring again, Ian. Are my table manners really so horrible?”

Her eyes twinkled mischievously, taking the sting out of her words.

He laughed.

“You know they’re perfect. You ought to emigrate to the UK.

I bet you’d have no trouble finding a teaching job at some private school for wealthy young ladies. “

“How ghastly!” Emily wrinkled her nose in mock disgust. It was just barely too long for her face, adding the touch of imperfection needed to make her beauty human.

“How could I think of abandoning my fine career here in order to teach spoiled young English girls which fork to use?”

Ian sensed the faint trace of bitterness in her voice and mentally kicked himself. He should have known better than to let the conversation wander anywhere near the working world. It wasn’t something she enjoyed talking or thinking about.

Emily was rare among Afrikaner women. Born into an old line established

Transvaal family, she should have grown up ready to take her place as a dutiful, compliant housewife. That hadn’t happened, Even as a little girl, Emily had known that she would rather write than cook, and that she preferred politics to sewing. Her police official father, widowed at an early age, had found it impossible to instill more “womanly” interests.

So, instead of marrying as her father wished, she’d stayed in school and earned a journalism degree. And four years of -life on the University of

Witwatersrand’s freethinking campus had pulled her even further away from her father’s hard-core pro-apartheid views. Politics became something else for them to fight about.

Degree in hand, she’d gone looking for a job. But once outside the sheltered confines of the academic world, she’d learned the hard way that most South African employers still felt women should work only at home or in the typing pool.

Unable to find a newspaper that would hire her and unwilling to admit defeat to her father, she’d been forced to sign on with one of Cape

Town’s English-speaking law firms-as a secretary. The job paid her rent and gave her a chance to practice her English, and she hated every minute of it.

Emily saw Ian’s face fall and reached out, gently stroking his hand.

“You mustn’t mind my moods, Ian. I warned you about them, didn’t P They are my curse.”

She smiled again.

“There! You see! I am happy again. As I always am when you are near.”

Ian fought to hide a smile of his own. Somehow Emily could get away with romantic cliche ds that would have made any other woman he’d ever known burst out laughing.