Vixen 03 (42 page)

“This won’t take long,” said Pitt, casually checking his dark glasses for smudges. “Did you know Captain Fawkes?”

“I appreciate the fact your rather strange request to meet me in a rural cemetery came down from high sources in your government, but I want it understood that I’m here out of courtesy, not to answer questions.”

“Understood,” Pitt said.

Fool’s Mate I 281

“Yes, I once met Captain Fawkes.” De Vaal gazed into space. “Back in October, I believe it was. Soon after his family were murdered. I expressed my condolences on behalf of the Defence Ministry.”

“Did he accept your offer to command the raid on Washington?”

De Vaal didn’t bat an eye. “Pure rot. The man was mentally unbalanced by the death of his wife and children. He planned and conducted the raid entirely on his own.”

“Did he?”

“My position and rank do not have to tolerate rudeness.” De Vaal came to his feet. “Good day, Mr. Pitt.”

Pitt let him walk nearly twenty feet before he said, “Operation Wild Rose, Minister. Our intelligence people knew about it almost from the beginning.”

De Vaal stopped in midstride, turned, and looked at Pitt. “They knew?” He walked back until he was standing face to face with the man from NUMA. “They knew about Wild Rose?”

“That shouldn’t surprise you, of all people,” Pitt said affably. “After all, it was you who leaked it to them.”

De Vaal’s haughty composure cracked and he looked to Zeegler for support. The colonel’s eyes were unblinking and his face was as hard as stone. “Preposterous,” De Vaal said. “You’re making a wild accusation based on the wind.”

“I admit to a few holes in the net,” said Pitt. “But I came into the game late. A neat scheme, and whatever the outcome, you won, Minister. The plan was never meant to succeed. Blaming the AAR for the raid in order to drum up sympathy for the South African white minority was a smoke screen. The real purpose was to embarrass and topple Prime Minister Koertsmann’s party so the Defence Ministry could have an excuse for stepping in with a new military government headed by none other than Pieter De Vaal.”

“Why are you doing this?” De Vaal said savagely. “What do you hope to gain?”

“I don’t like to see traitors prosper,” Pitt retorted. “Incidentally, how much did you and Emma salt away? Three, four, five million dollars?”

“You’re chasing shadows, Pitt. Colonel Zeegler, here, can tell you. Emma was a paid agent for the AAR.”

“Emma sold doctored reports from your Defence Ministry files to any black revolutionary sucker enough to pay for them and split the take with you. A most lucrative side venture, De Vaal.”

“I do not have to stand here and listen to this garbage,” the Minister

282
VIXEN 03p>

hissed. He nodded at Zeegler and gestured toward the waiting Bentley.

Zeegler did not move. “I’m sorry, Minister, but I think Mr. Pitt should be heard out.”

De Vaal was nearly choking with rage. “You have served me for ten years, Joris. You well know I punish insubordination to the extreme.”

“I’m aware of that, sir, but I think we should stay, particularly in light of the circumstances.” Zeegler pointed toward a black man who was threading his way between the gravestones. He wore a grim, determined face and was dressed in the uniform of the AAR. A long, curved Moroccan knife was gripped loosely in one hand.

“The fourth actor in the drama,” said Pitt. “Permit me to introduce Thomas Machita, the new leader of the African Army of Revolution.”

Though the Minister’s entourage carried no weapons, Zeegler stood unconcerned. De Vaal spun and shouted to his chauffeur while gesturing wildly at Machita. “Sergeant! Shoot him! For God’s sake, shoot him!”

The sergeant looked through De Vaal, as though the Minister were transparent. De Vaal turned to Zeegler, his eyes sick with a mounting fear. “Joris, what goes on?”

Zeegler did not answer; his face was an emotionless void.

Pitt pointed into the open grave. “It was Captain Fawkes who blew the whistle on your shifty act. He may have been unhinged by the death of his family and blinded by revenge, but it struck him that he had been horribly and pitifully duped when you sent Emma to kill him. A necessary part of your plan. Captured alive, he might have revealed your direct involvement. Also, you couldn’t take the chance he could somehow become wise that it was you who masterminded the attack on his farm.”

“No!” The word scratched from De Vaal’s throat.

“Captain Patrick McKenzie Fawkes was the only man in South Africa who could pull off Wild Rose. You ordered the murders of his wife and children knowing a grief-stricken man would seek retribution. The massacre was a stroke of cunning. Even your own people at the Ministry were at a loss to connect the raiders with any known insurgent organization. It never dawned on them their boss sneaked in a team of black mercenaries from Angola.”

De Vaal’s eyes registered stunned desperation. “How is it possible you know all this?”

“Like any good intelligence officer, Colonel Zeegler kept investigating until he ran down the truth,” Pitt said. “Also, as do most sea captains,

Fool’s Mate I 283

Fawkes kept a log. I was there when Emma tried to kill him. Fawkes saved my life before the ship blew up. But not before inserting his log, along with a few added notes about you, into a watertight tobacco pouch and slipping it under my shirt. The pages made damned interesting reading, especially to the President and the director of the NSA.

“By the way,” Pitt continued, “that phony message you sent implicating Prime Minister Koertsmann was never really taken at face value. The White House was satisfied that Operation Wild Rose was conceived and conducted behind his back. Thus, your oily scheme to take over your own government was blown to dust. In the end Fawkes did you in, even if it was posthumously. The other details were supplied by Major Machita, who agreed to bury the hatchet with Colonel Zeegler long enough to put you away. As to my presence, I asked for and received the role of master of ceremonies because of my debt to Captain Fawkes.”

De Vaal stared at Pitt, his features set in defeat. Then he turned to Zeegler. “Joris, you arranged for my betrayal?”

“No man stands with a traitor.”

“If ever a man deserved to die, De Vaal, it is you,” said Machita. The hatred seemed to seep from his pores.

De Vaal ignored Machita. “You cannot simply execute a man of my station. The law demands a trial.”

“It is Prime Minister Koertsmann’s wish that there be no scandal.” Zeegler spoke without looking his chief in the eye. “He suggested you die in the line of duty.”

“That would make me a martyr.” A tiny degree of confidence restored De Vaal’s composure. “Can you see me as a martyr?”

“No, sir. That’s why he agreed to my proposal that you turn up missing. Better you become a forgotten mystery than a national hero.”

Too late, De Vaal caught the glint of steel as Machita’s knife arched up between his groin and navel. The Defence Minister’s eyes bulged in shock. He tried to speak; his mouth moved slackly, but the only sound that came was an animallike gasp. A red stain spread across his uniform.

Machita kept his hand on the knife’s handle, watching death as it closed about De Vaal. Then, as the body sagged, Machita gave it a push backward, and De Vaal fell into the open grave. The three men walked to the edge and stood looking down as streams of dirt trickled and dropped on the figure sprawled below.

“A fitting rest for his kind,” Machita muttered.

Zeegler’s face was pale. He was hardened to seeing battlefield dead,

284
p>

VIXEN 03

but this was quite another thing. “I’ll have the driver fill in the grave.”

Pitt shook his head. “No need. Fawkes made one final request in his log. I promised myself I’d see to it.”

“As you wish.” Zeegler turned to leave. Machita looked as if he were going to say something, thought better of it, and started toward the underbrush surrounding the cemetery.

“Hold on,” said Pitt. “Neither of you can afford to waste this opportunity.”

“Opportunity?” Zeegler said.

“After acting together to destroy a mutual cancer, it would be stupid not to stand face to face and discuss your differences.”

“A waste of words,” Zeegler said contemptuously. “Thomas Machita only speaks with violence.”

“Like all Westerners, Mr. Pitt, you are naive to our battle,” Machita said, his face stoic. “Talk cannot change what is meant to be. The racist South African government will fall to blacks in time.”

“You will pay dearly before your flag flies over Cape Town,” said Zeegler.

“Fool’s mate,” said Pitt. “You’re both playing a fool’s-mate gambit.”

Zeegler looked at him. “Perhaps in your eyes, Mr. Pitt. But to us it goes to a depth no outsider can fathom.”

The colonel continued to his car and Machita faded into the jungle.

The truce was over. The chasm was too wide to be crossed.

A wave of impotency mixed with anger swept Pitt. “What will it all matter a thousand years from now?” he shouted after them.

He picked up the shovel and in a slow tempo began scooping dirt into the grave. He could not bring himself to look at De Vaal. Soon he heard the splatter of dirt on dirt and he knew no one would ever see the Defence Minister again.

When he was finished and the mound was neatly shaped, he opened a box that lay on the grass beside the headstone and removed four flowering plants. These he carefully embedded in the soil at the corners of the Fawkes burial plot. Then he straightened and stepped back.

“Rest well, Captain Fawkes. May you not be judged too harshly.”

Feeling neither remorse nor sadness but rather a kind of contentment, Pitt placed the empty box under one arm and the shovel over his shoulder and set a course for the village of Umkono.

Behind him, the four bougainvillea plants arched their blossoms toward the African sun.

Omega

South Pacific-January 1989

Rongelo Island-actually a tiny atoll, an island in name only-was a solitary fragment of land floating in isolation on 160,000 square miles of Pacific. Its mass rose only six feet above the glitter of the ocean, so low it was impossible to see from ten miles away. Driven by wind and tide, the waves burst on the fragile reef surrounding the narrow strand of bone-white beach, and then closed ranks on the other side, marching on for hundreds of miles before making the next landfall.

The island was barren except for a few rotting coconut palms that had been battered to stumps by typhoon waves. In the middle of its highest point the skeletons of Dr. Vetterly and his assistants, turned bleached and porous over the years, lay on the jagged coral, the empty eye sockets of their skulls turned skyward, as though waiting for deliverance.

At sunset the thunderclouds behind Rongelo caught the diminishing rays of light and glowed a flaring gold as the missile dropped silently from space, the thunder of its passage through the atmosphere left far behind.

Suddenly a blue-white blaze lighted the sea for hundreds of miles, and a great fireball swallowed the atoll. In less than a second the fiery mass erupted and swelled like a monstrous spastic bubble. The blinding colors

286
p>

VIXEN 03

on its surface melted from orange to pink and finally to deep purple. The shock wave lashed across the water like a lightning bolt, flattening the rolling swells.

Then the fireball released its hold on the surface and boiled toward the sky, digesting millions of tons of coral before spitting it out in a swirling geyser of steam and rubble. The mass inflated to a diameter of five miles, and in less than a minute the inferno reached an altitude of 115,000 feet. There it hung, gradually cooling into an immense dark cloud that slowly drifted to the north.

Rongelo Island had disappeared. All that remained was a depression three hundred feet deep and two miles across. Quickly the sea rushed in and covered any trace of the gaping wound. The sun was tinted an eerie yellow-green as it stole below the horizon.

The Quick Death organism had ceased to be.