Vortex

The big Afrikaner’s shotgun butt smashed into the side of his skull, sending a surging, tearing, burning wave of pain through Ian’s head. The alley whirled round in his dazed vision and he felt himself sliding to his knees. God, it hurt. He’d never been in so much pain before. The sunlight that had seemed so dim seconds before now seemed intolerably, horribly dazzling.

He heard Knowles shouting something he couldn’t make out through the roaring in his ears. He looked up and saw a heavy leather boot arcing toward his face.

This time, mercifully, the lights went out and stayed out.

III

JULY 19—POLITICAL DETENTION LEVEL, CAPE TOWN

MAGISTRATES’ COURT

No shadows softened the cellblock’s steel-barred doors, long empty corridors, and row after row of small square holding pens. There were no shadows because the harsh, overhead fluorescent lights were never turned off. They stayed on, robbing prisoners and guards alike of any sense of passing time.

As Ian lay faceup on a concrete slab that passed for a bed, he noticed that the cracked white ceiling tiles of his cell had finally stopped spinning around and around. And his head, though it still hurt, no longer felt swollen up like a pain-filled helium balloon. He almost smiled at the strange-sounding simile. Maybe he’d taken more punishment than he remembered.

Just the ability to think straight at all was a major improvement, he decided. In the hours since he’d struggled back to some semblance of consciousness, stray bits and pieces of rational thought had tumbled through his mind, coming and going among a host of jumbled memories, dreams, and half forgotten songs. But now he could start putting all the pieces back together, forming them into some sensible picture of what had gone on since they’d tossed him into this cramped, dingily antiseptic cage.

For instance, he remembered seeing Sam Knowles being locked into a similar cell just down the hall. And this time, Ian did smile, remembering the steady stream of swear words and obscene, elaborate insults pouring out of his cameraman’s mouth. Knowles at least, though bloody, had very definitely been unbowed.

That was a comforting image to hold on to in the midst of a series of much more depressing visions of his likely future. Ian had no illusions left about his network’s compassion or generosity. A reporter who got himself beaten up and deported while getting an exciting story would be embraced with open arms. But a reporter who got tossed out without anything to show for it, save a few bruises, was a has-been heading straight for the television trash heap.

Ian groaned softly. Being kicked out of South Africa without the chance to see Emily again was bad enough. The thought of being sent to read the weather in somewhere called Lower Podurtkia made his almost certain deportation even worse.

“Hey, you! Amerikaan! On your feet. The new kommandant wants to see you.”

Ian turned his head. A warder stood just outside his cell door. Keys dangled from the man’s plump hand.

Head pounding again, Ian slowly sat up and levered himself off the concrete slab. The cell door slammed open.

“Come on, man. Don’t keep the kommandant waiting. You’re in enough blery trouble as it is. ” The warder motioned him out into the corridor where

Knowles and three other guards stood waiting.

Fifteen minutes later, the two men found themselves standing in front of the detention-center commandant’s enormous, highly polished desk. Two bearlike guards stood to either side. Ian wondered whether they really expected Sam and him to try to jump their chief, or whether they were simply posted as part of a general pattern of intimidation. More the latter than the former, he suspected.

At first glance, the new commandant himself looked more like someone’s kindly, mild-mannered junior clerk than a secret policeman. But that pleasant resemblance dissolved on closer examination. The man’s pale blue, almost reptilian eyes rarely blinked behind thick, wire-rimmed glasses. And his puffy, thin-lipped face seemed permanently set in a sour scowl. He wore a plain uniform devoid of any badge of rank or other ornamentation-except for a single red, white, and black pin fastened to his tunic. The

Afrikaner’s fingers drummed rhythmically while he leafed through the single document blotting the surface of his desk.

Ian focused his still-blurry vision, trying to make out the insignia embossed on the man’s lapel pin. For a second, it wavered in and out of focus. Then he recognized the symbol-the three-armed swastika of the

Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the AWB. Jesus Christ. He struggled to keep the shock he felt off his face. The AWB’s fanatics were supposed to be nothing more than a lunatic fringe groupa group despised as much by the ruling National Party as by anyone else in South Africa. So what the hell was a high-ranking official doing wearing their insignia? Not only wearing it, but wearing it proudly, he thought, studying the commandant’s arrogant profile.