Pitt took a flashlight from the car’s door pocket and got out. Jarvis followed, but Metz hurried off into the night without saying a word. Pitt aimed the beam through the bus windows and into the back of the truck. They were both empty.

Pitt and Jarvis skirted the deserted vehicles and found Metz standing stock still, hands clenched at his sides. His evening jacket was soaked and his hair plastered to his scalp. He looked like a resurrected drowning victim.

“The/owa?” Jarvis asked.

Metz spastically waved his arms at the dark. “Shagged ass.”

“Shagged … what?”

“That damned Scot has sailed her away!”

“Jesus, are you sure?”

Metz’s face and his voice were alive with a desperate kind of urgency. “I don’t misplace battleships. This is where she’s been moored during the refit.” Suddenly he spotted something and ran over to the edge of the dock. “My God, look at that! The mooring lines are still tied to the dock bollards. The crazy idiots cast off their lines from the ship. It’s as though they never intend to moor her again.”

Jarvis leaned over and stared down at where the heavy lines disappeared into the inky water. “My fault. Criminal negligence not to have

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believed the handwriting on the wall.”

“We still can’t be certain they’re actually going through with an attack,” Pitt said.

Jarvis shook his head. “They’re going to do it; you can count on that.” Tiredly, he rested his weight against a piling. “If only they’d given us a date and a target.”

“The date was there all the time,” said Pitt.

Jarvis looked at him questioningly and waited.

“You said the idea behind the attack was to motivate sympathy for the South African whites and provoke American anger against the black revolutionaries,” Pitt continued. “What more perfect day than today?”

“It is now five minutes past twelve on Wednesday morning.” Jarvis’s voice was tense. “I make nothing eventful out of that.”

“The originators of Operation Wild Rose have a superb sense of timing,” said Pitt in a dry, ironic tone. “Today is also December the seventh, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.”

5

The IOWA

52

Pretoria, South Africa-December 7, 1988

Pieter De Vaal sat alone and read a book in his office at the Defence Ministry. It was early evening and the summer light filtered through the arched windows. A soft rap came at the door.

De Vaal spoke without looking up from his reading.

“Yes?”

Zeegler entered. “We’ve been alerted that Fawkes has launched the operation.”

De Vaal’s face showed no trace of interest as he laid aside the book and handed Zeegler a piece of paper. “See that the communications officer on duty personally sends this message to the American State Department.”