Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) by Nicholas P Clark Page B

lot fairer
than the system that was supposed to have come to an end in South
Africa. A strong
opinion
one way
or the
other was sure to alienate
someone, and he had carefully
nurtured the image
of an apolitical
everyman,
ever to put that cover in
danger. His apparent
disinterest
gave him great access and it also helped him to fly under the radar of
the authorities. However,
even in the new South
Africa there was a
latent prejudice that touched everyone, including Jack, and it was that
prejudice that allowed him to climb into the back
of the Police Land
Rover without asking any
questions—the
policeman
escorting Jack
was white, but had the officer been black, Jack may have been a little
more cautious. The former ruling minority still had a loud voice in the
new state and they did everything in their power to discredit any black
South African who was in a position of authority. That character assassination usually took the form of allegation of corruption. There were
many stories of black police officers abusing their power. One of those
    stories told of how some of the corrupt officers would kidnap foreign
nationals and threaten them with violence, or death, if a “security fee”
was not forthcoming. Jack suspected that such stories were more fiction than fact, but they were always there in the back of his mind, no
matter how unrealistic he believed them to be.
    The police officer
opened a door to the back of the vehicle and he
smiled warmly at Jack as he waited for
him to climb inside. In the
context
of the bomb in his building, it wasn’t so farfetched to believe
that the police would want to speak to him at some point, and so he
climbed into the vehicle without
pause for thought. The door closed
firmly and as it
did Jack noticed that there were no handles
on the
doors in the
back
of the Land
Rover. A thick iron
mesh separated
Jack from the officer sitting behind the wheel in the front, completing
the appearance
of the Land Rover
being nothing
more than a small
prison on wheels.
As uneasy feeling came over Jack for a moment but
it
quickly dissipated once he reassured himself that such a set up was
not uncommon for a
police vehicle. A little warning from the officer
about what to expect
once he was inside the Land Rover would have
been nice, but given the circumstances, it was understandable that the
oversight was
made. Besides, the police in any country were trained
to make the experience of tangling with the law, in any capacity, an
uncomfortable one. The more a suspect
or potential witness could be
knocked
off guard, the better was the chance for the truth to be revealed during the interview stage.
    They
drove away from the crime scene at a sober
pace,
passing
more
emergency vehicles which were heading in the
opposite direction as they
continued towards the
police station, as well as an increasingly swelling crowd of onlookers who were once again calling up
enough bravery to move in towards the source of the explosions for a
better look. There was nothing about the policeman’s actions that gave
Jack any reason to doubt his sincerity—the cop was the very
epitome
of calm and collected.
    Jack liked crowds, for the
most
part, as they
anonymity
and
cover,
but
this
crowd
was
a
number
of them were looking right at him as he sat in the back
of
the Land Rover, and in his line of business it was never a good idea to
draw too
much attention to
one’s self. A man in suit in the back
of a
cop car
    41
    provided him with
little
different—a
    warranted some scrutiny, in the estimation of most people. No doubt
some
of those faces in the crowd had already
decided that Jack had
something to do with the explosion,
even though they
knew nothing
about him or the circumstances and progress of the investigation.
    Jack moved his head this way and that in as natural a fashion as
he could muster; he didn’t want the people looking in at him to think
that he was being in some way
evasive as that would
only serve to
heighten their curiosity