Invictus - Carlin [96]
An elephant gun—or a superhuman effort of collective will. And something close to that was what the Springbok players discovered they carried within when they awoke that morning at the Sandton Sun and Towers Hotel, a modern five-star complex in an affluent shopping area of Johannesburg, about ten minutes’ drive north of Mandela’s home.
Big Kobus Wiese was sharing a room with his equally big companion, and fellow choir singer, Balie Swart. Wiese was the one who had uttered that bloodcurdling cry of defiance in the scrum at the semifinal against France, but now he was silent. “The pressure,” said Wiese, “was absolutely hectic. It was massive. The night before I had phoned my mother. Nothing specific, just to hear her voice, which helps me switch off. But now I felt fear—fear that we would disappoint all those millions of fans. We had that sense of expectations from knowing for the first time ever that the whole country was behind us, and it was quite overwhelming. It was frightening, but it also gave you energy. I had a profound sense that everything I had done all my life was now coming to a head.”
The players had breakfast in an atmosphere of unbearable tension and pressure and expectation. They felt as if they were inside a bubble, suspended in time. Or like astronauts about to lift off. They needed to let off steam or they would explode. That was what “the captain’s run” was for. Midmorning, they all gathered at the foyer of the hotel and, with Pienaar leading the way, they went for a two-kilometer jog around the neighborhood of the hotel. As François Pienaar recalled, “There was so much nervous tension among the guys but then we turned left out of the hotel, running in a tight group, and I heard noises and shouts, and four little black kids selling newspapers recognized us and chased after us and started calling our names—they knew almost everyone on that team—and the hairs on my neck stood on end. I don’t even know if these kids were literate, but they recognized who we were and for them it was their team. It was the moment when I saw, more clearly than ever before, that this was far bigger than anything we could ever have imagined.”
Mandela looked at himself in the mirror in his new green jersey, put on his cap, and liked what he saw. Shortly before 1:30, he walked out of the front door of his home, ready to board his gray armored Mercede-Benz to the stadium. Kickoff was at three o’clock. Ordinarily, Ellis Park wouldn’t have been much more than fifteen minutes away, but given the certainty of heavy traffic, they would leave early. The bodyguards were all brisk, silent, muscular efficiency. As the day had worn on they had became progressively less chatty, more solemnly busy, checking their route on a map—a route they had gone over a dozen times in the previous week, alert to every possible vulnerability. They kept in constant touch with the police, making sure the snipers were all in position around the stadium, checking in with the motorcycle escort cops, checking with the security people at Ellis Park that the entrance would be clear for the arrival of the presidential convoy.
But when Mandela stepped out of the house, the entire sixteen-strong bodyguard detail froze, breaking the flow of their intense preparations to gawk at their charge in his new green jersey. “Wow!” Moonsamy heard himself say under his breath. Mandela chuckled at their surprise and bade them all his customarily cheery good afternoon, at which point they all mumbled “good afternoon” back and snapped back into PPU mode, all briskness as they ushered Mandela into his car, slammed the doors shut, took their places in the four-car convoy. Moonsamy’s place, as “number one,” was in the gray Mercedes, stiffly alert, on the passenger seat in front of Mandela. All day long he would never be more than a pace away from the president. The police motorcycles