Vice President James Malcolm Forrester shared that same driving dedication to the job. He strode briskly to the chair at the head of the table and sat down. Civil nods greeted him.
After a somewhat rocky start, Forrester had come to be regarded by his administration colleagues as a solid team player and a firstrate organizer. He paid a lot of attention to his duties as the NSC’s chairman, which was appropriate, since it was his most important role.
Attending foreign funerals and delivering speeches to an often endless round of political fund-raisers couldn’t compare with helping to decide serious questions of national security.
The
NSC
reported directly to the President, recommending courses of action to him on any matters relating to war and peace. Its permanent members included the secretaries of state and defense, the national security advisor, and the director of the
CIA
. Other agency and department heads were asked to sit in or provide information as needed.
In a very real sense, the
NSC
represented a focal point for every major intelligence, military, and diplomatic resource possessed by the United
States. In a crisis, its frantic, fast-paced deliberations could result in the dispatch of urgent communi quis spy planes, carrier battle groups, or even divisions of ground troops to any point on the globe.
But no imminent doom appeared to menace the United States or its allies, so the atmosphere was relaxed. This meeting was routine.
So routine in fact that several of the NSC’s permanent members hadn’t bothered to attend. Instead, they’d sent a mixed bag of deputies to fill the seats around the meeting room’s large central table. Each was accompanied by an assistant ready to handle all the necessary briefing and background materials, and several stenographers waited to record every remark.
Typed agendas rested in front of each person, and clear crystal pitchers of iced coffee and lemonade occupied the middle of the table. They would be empty by the time the meeting adjourned. Even this far below ground, the White House air-conditioning system couldn’t completely cool
Washington’s sweltering late-summer air.
The subbasement meeting room had an oddly colonial appearance, with wooden wainscoting and elaborate molding on its low ceiling. The multimedia projection screen hung on one wall would have jarred an architect’s sensibilities, but this was a working space-not a tourist showcase. There would never be any photo opportunities here. The only decorations on its walls were maps of the world, the
USA
, and the Soviet
Union.
The Vice President flipped to the first page of his agenda and watched as the others followed suit.
Forrester was not a tall man, something that was rarely noticed because he always seemed to be in motion. Trotting down airplane ramps in foreign countries. Striding into flag draped banquet halls. Or racing through a rapid-fire round of golf at the Congressional country club. He often joked that he was actually six foot eight, but had put the extra inches in escrow to avoid appearing taller than the President. It was a joke that reflected the all too bitter truth that the vice presidency was an office with too much ceremony and too little responsibility, but right now he had real work to do.
He tapped the table gently, calling the meeting to order.
“All right.
Let’s get down to it.”
He tossed the printed agenda back onto the table.
“Un-3
fortunately, the first item before us didn’t come up in time to make it onto the documents sent to you for review last night. South Africa popped up at my breakfast with the President this morning. He’s asked us to discuss a response to Pretoria’s latest actions-including this new troop call-up the wire services are reporting.”
Some of the men sitting around the table looked momentarily blank. South
Africa was a long way outside the boundaries of their ordinary day-to-day concerns. For most of their professional lives, the continuing
U.S.-Soviet military and political tug-of-war had been the central reality. Some of them still found it difficult to adjust to a world where conflicts didn’t necessarily slide neatly into the usual East versus West pigeonhole.
Besides, data on Africa’s internal affairs rarely made it through the screening process managed by each cabinet department’s and intelligence agency’s junior staffers. All too often it wound up occupying waste space on rarely punched up computer disks or gathering dust in rusting file drawers.
Forrester hid a wry grin. For once, he had an advantage over most of the experts around this table. As a senator, he’d served on the Foreign
Relations Committee and had spent a lot of time fencing with anti apartheid zealots on the Senate floor.
He looked toward the end of the table, toward a dapper, bookish-looking little man whose narrow face bore a somewhat incongruous full beard and neatly trimmed mustache.
“Look, Ed, why don’t you give us a quick rundown on our recent ‘relations’ with South Africa’s new government.” He didn’t bother to hide the irony in his voice.
“Certainly, Mr. Vice President.” Edward Hurley, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, nodded politely. His presence at the meeting was the result of a hurried, early morning call by Forrester to the State Department.
Hurley studied the faces around the table.
“Essentially, our relations with the new government headed by President Vorster can best be summed up as ‘cold and barely correct. ”
He paused, took off his tortoiseshell glasses, and started cleaning the lenses with a rumpled handkerchief.
“We had
another indication of just what that means last week when our ambassador,
Bill Kirk, visited Vorster for the first time since the Blue Train massacre.
Bill had instructions from the secretary to find out just how far Pretoria plans to go in reintroducing strict apartheid.”
Hurley smiled thinly and put his glasses back on.
“Unfortunately,
Ambassador Kirk never had the chance to ask. Instead, he was forced to sit through a half-hour-long lecture by Vorster on our foreign policy failures in the region. Shortly after that, Pretoria notified us that they were unilaterally reducing the number of our embassy staff personnel. And
Vorster’s flatly refused all further attempts to meet with him. We’ve been shunted down to below the ministerial level. ”
Muttered disbelief rolled around the table. What the hell was South
Africa’s new leader playing at? Political disagreements between Washington and Pretoria were common enough, but why the flagrant and apparently calculated discourtesy?
The Vice President watched his colleagues closely, wondering how they’d react to the full version of Vorster’s snub. Just reading Kirk’s telexed summary of the meeting had raised his own blood pressure.
Apparently Kirk hadn’t even been given the opportunity to say hello.
Instead, Vorster had launched straight into a scathing diatribe full of contempt for what the South African called “America’s shameful and treacherous conduct.”
“The man had gone on to accuse the U.S. of meddling in
Pretoria’s internal affairs-of inciting “innocent blacks” to violence and disorder. Forrester assumed that was a reference to several recent State
Department statements deploring the white regime’s police crackdown on the black townships. Hardly justification for what amounted to a full-fledged kick in the teeth.
He eyed the ponderous, whitehaired man sitting to his immediate right.
Forrester had long suspected that Christopher Nicholson, former federal judge and current director of the
CIA
, spent almost as much time developing sources inside the White House as he did administering the Agency’s far flung overseas intelligence-gathering. His presence at what had been expected to be a routine
NSC
meeting confirmed that suspicion.
The Vice President decided to see just how thoroughly Nicholson had prepared.
“Got any bio on this clown Vorster, Chris?”
Forrester was a firm believer in knowing as much as possible about the world leaders he might have to deal with. Despite the reams of bloodless statistical analysis by legions of social scientists, economists, and other “experts,” world politics still all too often seemed to boil down to a question of personalities.
To his credit, the
CIA
chief avoided looking smug.
“Fortunately I do, Mr.
Vice President. We’ve also run through the archives and come up with some photos of the gentleman in question.”
Nicholson’s aide flipped through a thick sheaf of papers and handed several heavily underlined sheets to his boss. The
CIA
director took them and nodded politely toward a junior staffer standing near the door.
“Anytime,
Charlie.”
The lights dimmed slowly and a slide projector whirred throwing a grainy, black-and-white photo onto the wall screen. The photo showed a much thinner, much younger Karl Vorster.
“Karl Adriaan Vorster. Born 1928 in the northern Transvaal. Law degree from
Witwatersrand University in 1950. Sociology degree from Stellenbosch
University in 1956. Became a member of the Broederbond sometime in the early fifties, probably in 1953…”
Forrester nodded to himself as Nicholson droned on, running through
Vorster’s steady, if unspectacular, rise to power within the ruling
National Party. As a young lawyer, the South African must have been in on the very beginnings of Pretoria’s efforts to codify racial segregation and white domination its policies of strict apartheid. His membership in the
Broederbond, South Africa’s secretive ruling elite, made that a certainty.
The slide projector clicked to another photo, this one showing Vorster climbing out of the back of an official car.
“Right
after he got his doctorate, he joined the government. Since then, he’s held a succession of increasingly senior posts in both the Bureau of State
Security and Ministry of Law and Order. ”
Nicholson turned to face the Vice President.
“Essentially, sir, this man
Vorster has been working to keep the black population in its place for over forty years.”
Another photo. This time showing an older, more jowly Vorster standing beside a gaunt, balding man in a plain black cassock.
“He’s also very religious, belongs to the Dutch Reformed Church, which is the mainstream religious denomination in South Africa. Sprinkles biblical references throughout virtually every speech or even conversation. Naturally, he’s an active member of a group opposing racial reform within the church.”
Naturally. Forrester frowned.
“What about the past few years? What’s he been up to?”
The
CIA
chief flipped to the back page of his notes, then raised his eyebrows.
“He’s been very active lately. He’s made a lot of statements and given a lot of speeches against reforming the apartheid system. While the rest of the National Party has slowly changed, he hasn’t budged an inch.”
Nicholson’s pudgy forefinger settled on a paragraph near the bottom of the page, and his lips pursed into a soundless whistle.
“In fact, back in 1986, when they abolished the law against interracial marriages, he said, quote, The mixing of the white and lower races can only result in a reversal of the evolutionary process. Unquote. ”
Nervous laughter rose from the rest of the group. The idea that anyone in this day and age, especially a head of state, could actually hold such a grotesque belief seemed impossible to accept. Nicholson’s black assistant grimaced.
Forrester shook his head. “if he’s been so out of step with his own party, how’s he managed to stay in government so long? And why would he want to?”
Hurley answered him.
“The Haymans government probably kept him on as a sop to their own conservative wing. They’d been taking a lot of flak from the Herstige National Party and the rest of the right-wing splinter groups. I’d guess the thought was that Vorster’s continued presence in the cabinet might help dissuade more conservatives from jumping ship to the opposition. ”
Forrester nodded. He wasn’t a stranger to that kind of reasoning.
“As for why he stayed on?” Hurley shrugged.
“Probably figured he could get farther in the National Party, even if he agreed more with the radical right.”
“Exactly,” Nicholson agreed. The
CIA
director tapped another page of notes.
“But sources say he’s also met with leaders of the AWB-the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement-and the Oranjewerkers, a far-right group that wants the Orange Free State and the Transvaal to secede from the
RSA
so they can form their own ‘pure’ white societies. Rumor has it that Vorster’s even a covert member of some of these groups. ”
“Probably more than that.” Hurley was cleaning his glasses again. -AWB flags and pins are showing up all throughout the South African government. “
“Swell. Just swell.” Forrester nodded to the staffer near the lights.
They came back on, revealing a tableful of worried looking men and women.
“So we’ve got an incipient Nazi in power over there. And if that quote is typical, one who appears to be only loosely connected to reality. And now he’s decided to pick some kind of diplomatic fight with us. Over what we don’t know.”
Hurley resettled his glasses on his nose.
“Getting into a verbal shoving match with us isn’t as crazy as it sounds. It’ll play well with his hard-core supporters. Gives him another scapegoat to blame for any foreign policy or economic problems.
”
Nicholson nodded.
“It’s standard Afrikaner practice. Blame the communists. Blame the blacks. Blame backstabbing by Washington or London.
Blame anybody but themselves. ”
“So how do we respond?” Forrester’s question was partly rhetorical. He already knew all the standard answers. They could recommend recalling the
U.S. ambassador for consultations or suggest reducing Pretoria’s