The Author - Al Noteman.

STOLEN TIME.

Samantha McManus and her lover, Pete Ford are contracted to deliver the super-yacht 'Chameleon' from Cape Town to Brazil. En-route they are diverted to the diamond coast where a huge heist is in progress. The Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia - (PLAN), has moved a massive cache of uncut diamonds from Namibia’s largest mine at Oranjezainia on to a deep-sea trawler heading for Angola. The gems will finance the overthrow of the recently elected SWAPO Government of Namibia.

Directors of Azainia Mining meet to decide how best to recover their stolen gems but find they have only two choices. Alert the Namibian authorities and risk being landed with a huge tax bill as well as having to share any profits among shareholders, or keep quiet and recover the gems in their own way!

Lofty Lowland, the tough head of mining, persuades the Chairman that the second option makes more sense, leaving the directors free to sell the gems in South America thereby avoiding the huge Namibian diamond tax. After much boardroom infighting, Lowland gets his way so sets into operation a daring plan. He recruits one, Karl Muller, an ex-mercenary who carries out an armed helicopter assault on the escaping trawler, managing to subdue its crew. The gems are transferred to Chameleon, which is then routed via the islands of St. Helena and Ascension to Brazil. Later, on closing the Brazilian coast, agents of PLAN attack the yacht and a bloody sea battle ensues; killing some and leaving Chameleon badly damaged. The yacht limps in to the port of Cabedelo to be repaired at Jacare’ then heads up the Amazon to the jungle City of Manaus to meet Chameleon's new owner.

Arriving there, they learn that the diamonds are to finance a gruesome life extension operation for the terminally ill Chairman of the Azainia Mining Company. Doctor’s Andrade and Narunski, who run the secret Clinica Manaus, have perfected an operation that promises to be the fountain of youth but with terrible strings attached and a price tag, that only the super rich can afford. Pedro Escadore, the Colombian drug lord and owner of Chameleon, finances this clinic to launder the vast profits from his other activities.

However, word of these life-extending operations reach SWASP, a little known branch of the CIA. Ben Polinski, its evil director decides to take control of the clinic so that he can use the procedures on third world dictators to further his aims of world domination. He plans to create a new American Empire by offering the heads of puppet regimes eternal life. He figures their economies, armies, minerals and labour force, could be exploited for the benefit of his new US Empire. The logic behind this thinking is, since the life span of a recipient of eternal life depends on regular servicing by the medical team at the clinic, there would be no disobedience.

It seems Polinski is unstoppable until Karl Muller and the crew of Chameleon decide to take a closer look at the Clinica Manaus. What they find is beyond belief, but the involvement of the drug lord, SWASP and the CIA, suggests a connection to the very heart of the US Government. Muller's small team is no match for such an Organisation so he alerts the British MI6 on neutral Grand Cayman in the hope that somehow SWASP and its evil director can be prevented from creating an American version of Hitler's Third Reich!

Fifty murders a day and a rape every five minutes made South Africa a pretty dangerous place in the sixties, especially for a cop. The police had an impossible task on their hands holding back the tide of deprived humanity in the black townships, so the last thing they needed now was another gruesome discovery on the mountain. No one could explain the deformed body parts found up there recently but the authorities realised that panic would ensue if the media got wind of it. So far however, they had managed to keep it quiet.

Sergeant Finney was tired and preparing to go home after a late shift when the radio crackled into life. It was past midnight and one of his patrol vans was reporting in as usual.

‘We've found another! Much bigger and almost complete this time,’ the officer reported.

‘Oh shit, better get it down to the SPCA then, Dirk,’ Finney responded.

‘I don't think so Sir, you'd better come and see this one.’ Finney sighed, then noted the officer's location; he was due off at two-o'clock and did not fancy being tied up all night with another stinking carcass.

‘OK, I'm on my way,’ he replied. The Sergeant gunned his old Ford Fairlane up on to DeWaal Drive where the officer had reported finding the body. A flashing blue light announced the location of the patrol van, it was parked up the mountain road, turned onto the flooded, rutted track and winced as his car bumped and skidded its way to the rendezvous. Cape Town in July is cold, wet and windy, it was all three that night as Finney got out of his car. Pissed off at being dragged out in the dead of night again, he slammed the car-door and struggled against the horizontal rain, to confront his underlings.

‘OK Dirk, where is this fucking thing?’ Dirk led the way up the track to a bend - he stopped under a Port Jackson tree and shone his torch on to an old army blanket that was covering the shape of a body. Finney shot a look of utter contempt at his officer. ‘You've wasted my time Dirk, it’s just another drifter, no wonder he's dead with this bloody weather; poor sod must have died of hypothermia. Take it to the City morgue as usual man.’ With that Finney pulled down his cap and walked back down the track, hurrying to get out of the foul weather and back into his warm car.

‘Wait!’ Dirk called. ‘I'll uncover it for you.’ Finney cursed as he turned back to face the blowing rain and strode back to where the body lay.

‘This had better be good,’ he snarled. Using a dead branch, Dirk gently lifted the old army blanket to expose the cadaver below. ‘Jesus Christ!’ Finney cried. ‘What the hell is that?’ he reeled at the sight and the awful smell of the monster lying below the blanket. ‘Cover the bloody thing up and get it in the back of the van quick, we can't let the press get wind of this one.’ The three men rolled the body up in a plastic sheet then carried it down the track to where the van was parked.

‘I'll see you boys at the station then, just bring it around the back and we'll dump it in the garage for now,’ he shouted, then drove off.

The Sergeant made sure there was no one in the lane behind the station before opening the disused garage door. He was busy moving aside years of junk that had been stored there when the patrol van approached and skidded to a halt in the cleared space. The men opened the rear door and Finney helped them lift the body out of the van.

‘Where do you want it?’ Dirk's muffled voice asked, through a scarf covering his nose.

‘Hold it there a minute boys,’ he said as he spotted an old pool table, ‘right, stick it on here.’ They did as instructed then got out of there as fast as they could, but Finney was still fascinated. He lifted the plastic sheet to take another look then drew back as the revolting smell hit him again but his curiosity compelled him to look once more at the horrible apparition below the sheet. He shuddered and felt the bile rising in his throat so covered the thing up again quickly before he threw up. Locking the door behind him, he made his way to the two men in the patrol van outside.

‘Now listen you two,’ he said, through the open window, ‘not a bloody word to anyone, if this gets out, you two will be looking for new jobs, do you follow?’

They nodded.

‘Right then, get on with your patrol I'll deal with this now.’

First thing next morning, Finney placed a call to a number that he had been given should more unexplained body parts turn up. The telephone was answered by the usual brusque voice.

‘Colonel Marais here.’

‘Oh yes, Colonel, this is Sergeant Finney at the Woodstock Police Station.’

‘Yes, what is it now Sergeant?’

‘Well Sir, my patrolmen have found another strange body on the mountain.’

‘Where is it now?’ the Colonel asked.

‘Here in the station Sir,’ Finney confirmed, ‘it’s in the old garage.’

‘Has anyone else seen it?’

‘Only my men, and whoever killed it!’

‘OK stay there, I will send someone to collect it from you right away,’ the Colonel ordered. ‘In the meantime, do not mention this to anyone, especially the press. Do you understand me Sergeant?’

‘Yes Sir,’

Twenty minutes later, a black Chevy van pulled up at the rear of the police station and two huge men got out.

‘Where is it?’ they demanded in Afrikaans. Finney opened the garage door and pointed to the pool table. One of them pulled back the plastic sheet.

‘Holy shit,’ he said holding his nose. ‘How the hell did this one escape?’

Finney overheard them cursing the mental hospital security system.

‘We'll take it from here Sergeant, you never saw a thing, if you know what I mean, this is a 'Boss' matter now.’

Finney nodded, he knew that you never crossed the boys from the Bureau of State Security, if you wished to remain healthy.

The Boss men loaded the body into the back of the Chevy, slammed the doors and sped off. Finney placed another call, this time to his contact at the mental home.

‘I've just had the Boss boys around here again,’ he said.

‘What was it this time?’ his contact asked.

‘You're not going to believe this,’ Finney replied.

‘Try me.’

‘Well, it’s human I think, dead of course and rotten, must have been dead a week or so, not sure what sex, we never got a proper look at that part. I suppose the Boss boys will find out and establish a cause of death but whatever killed it did it a favour.’

‘How do you mean, did it a favour?’

‘Well, it was some sort of freak, it must have been created up at that lab in the funny farm again, it’s just like the others but this one is complete and has two bloody heads.’

‘Two heads! God in heaven, what have they done now?’ Finny heard his contact cursing then the line went dead.

The Grand Architect of apartheid, Doctor Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd had been the Prime minister of South Africa for eight years, after being elected by a minority vote on the 2nd September1958. Through brutal policies and an efficient police force of mainly Afrikaners, he had kept the lid firmly shut on the black population since then. This allowed the minority white population to prosper tremendously. Under his premiership, white South Africa had achieved one of the highest standards of living on the planet and had made amazing advances in many fields, especially in medicine. The Country had become a world leader in organ transplants and rumour had it that they were very close to carrying out the world's first heart transplant on a human being.

Today, however, Dr. Verwoerd was not a happy man. His Boss operatives in Cape Town had just informed him of another bizarre find on Table Mountain. Verwoerd knew that the liberal press was trying to find some scandal to discredit his iron rule, so he summoned his cabinet ministers to an urgent meeting at the Union Buildings, Pretoria. Doctor Albert Hertzog, the Minister of Health, was getting a verbal tongue-lashing.

‘What in God's name are those butchers doing down in the Cape?’ the Prime Minister bellowed. ‘Have they no respect for human life or regard for the rule of law? ‘Can you imagine what the press will make of these strange discoveries? That poor deformed soul they found recently must belong to someone, he must have a family.’

‘Mr. Prime Minister Sir,’ Hertzog soothed. ‘Our people have got rid of that monster just like before. There will be no trace and no stories in the press. As for family, there is no family, the man was from a local mental institute,’ he added.

‘Mental Institute, good God man, are you telling me that we are experimenting on the insane?’

‘I assure you Sir. these are very dangerous people,’ Hertzog countered. ‘They have no future in our beloved country and it costs the State a fortune to subsidise these places to placate the liberals: my department justifies such research to further our expertise in medical science. I am sure you will agree Sir, that it has been worthwhile so far. We are so close to a breakthrough that it would be a crime to interfere with the research now, no matter where they find their donors,’ he concluded, undaunted.

‘Well I do hope you're right, Doctor, we need some favourable press for a change. Now please order your researchers, whoever they are, to be more careful where they dispose of their failures. This business could wreck the legitimate work being done by Professor Barnard, they would start to compare us with Hitler.’

Hertzog was quite correct in his predictions, but the Prime Minister, would never see the day. Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated just fourteen months before the greatest medical breakthrough of the twentieth century took place. Dimitri Tsafendas, a humble parliamentary porter butchered the Prime Minister before a shocked house during a session in Parliament Buildings, Cape Town, on the 6th September 1966.

A new Prime Minister was duly elected; again, by a minority vote and this one built on the apartheid foundations laid by Dr. Verwoerd. He even introduced some new, more punitive laws of his own, laws that would eventually lead to the demise of the all-powerful Nationalist Government, and pave the way for independence and Black Majority Rule.

At last, apartheid South Africa had something to shout about apart from the Springbok rugby team. Doctor Christiaan Barnard and his team of transplant surgeons had made the most amazing medical breakthrough in history. The ruling Nationalist Party could not wait to invite the international press they so despised, to report to a news hungry world that an Afrikaner had been the first to achieve the impossible. It all started to make sense to Sergeant Finney as he tried to clear his cluttered desk.

‘Maybe we'll get some peace now Dirk,’ he quipped as he scanned the pages of the Cape Times, reading the glowing reports of the medical firsts that had been carried out. ‘It says here, that after many failed experiments on animals the team eventually succeeded in perfecting what everyone thought was impossible. Well, we know where the bloody failures were dumped, hey Dirk,’ Finney laughed.

‘Yes, but why would they be creating creatures with two heads, in an attempt to get the heart stuff right?’ Dirk questioned innocently. ‘Anyway we found that thing near the funny farm, not Barnard's place,’ he added. Finney thought about this for a minute and felt a bit uneasy. Maybe he should tell the Press what they had found on the mountain. He decided to say nothing for now however. He knew that those goons at Boss would have destroyed all the evidence, so no matter what he told the Press, no one would ever believe him. He also knew that far more important people than himself had simply disappeared without trace, for much less a crime than grassing on the Nationalists. He returned to the banner headline on the front page of the morning newspaper.

As he started to read about the amazing events and took in the gory details of the fascinating operations, his mouth suddenly became very dry.

‘How about a pot of coffee Dirk?’

If Doctor Barnard had not removed the heart from the chest of a brain dead man in December 1967, the events recorded in the latter part of this story would probably not have happened. The donor died within minutes of course, but his heart continued to beat in the recipient's chest for another eighteen days. Barnard simply grafted it into Louis

Washkansky's chest cavity so that it would keep him alive after his own diseased heart was discarded.

This now commonplace procedure blew the minds of the established medical profession at the time and propelled Barnard into the limelight of a fascinated world. Soon, he became a celebrity with the jet-set lifestyle of a Hollywood film star. The bold and imaginative steps taken by this former back room researcher would change forever the way the world thought about life and mortality. The religious community was outraged, they questioned the morality of such operations and this new challenge to God’s authority, they warned that cheating death in this way would lead to great evil in the future. This story confirms that indeed it did.