“Understood.” Fawkes heaved a great sigh of relief. Then a thought occurred to him. “The train, Minister. How was it you traveled from the operating room in a Durban hospital to the Pembroke rail yard so quickly?”

For the first time, De Vaal smiled. “A simple ruse. I went in the front door of the hospital and out the back. An ambulance carried me to the Heidriek Air Base, where I took a military jet to an airstrip near Pembroke. The train belongs to our President. I merely borrowed it for a few hours while it was traveling to a scheduled overhaul.”

“But why the complicated illusion?”

“I often find it necessary to cloud my movements,” De Vaal answered. “And, I think you’ll agree, Operation Wild Rose is not exactly a product we want to advertise.”

“I see your point.”

“And you, Captain Fawkes. Can you drop from sight without prodding suspicious minds?”

Fawkes nodded solemnly. “I’ve left Umkono under a cloud of grief. My friends and neighbors think I’ve returned to Scotland.”

“All right, then.” De Vaal moved behind his desk, wrote on a slip of paper, and passed it across to Fawkes. “Here is the address of a hotel ten miles south of the city. Check into a room and wait for the necessary papers and instructions to get the ball rolling. As of this moment, the government of South Africa considers you dead.” He relaxed his shoulders. “God help us now.”

“God? No, I don’t think so.” An evil light began to dance in Fawkes’s eyes. “I sincerely doubt he’d want any part of it.”

On the floor below the Minister’s office Colonel Zeegler sat alone in an operations room and paced back and forth in front of a large table stacked with glossy photographs.

For the first time in his military career he was totally baffled. The raid on the Fawkes farm had an aura of intrigue about it that did not fit the usual terrorist scheme. It was accomplished with too much precision and sophistication for the AAR. Besides, it was not Lusana’s style. Granted, he might order the deaths of white soldiers, but he would never condone the murders of Fawkes’s Bantu workers, especially the women and children. That part ran counter to the insurgent leader’s known strategy.

“Who, then?” Zeegler mused aloud.

Operation Wild Rose I 89

Certainly not black units of the South African Defence Forces. That would have been impossible without Zeegler’s knowledge.

He stopped and shuffled the photographs taken by a team of investigators after the raid. No witnesses were ever found and none of the raiders caught. It was too perfect in execution, too completely free of flaws.

The slightest clue to the attacker’s identity eluded him. But his years of experience told him it was there, obscured in the background.