The American Ambassador

by Ward Just

  Burkhalter greeted them with a shy smile and a Grüss Gott. He and Kleust embraced.

  The three of them drank beer on the verandah, monkeys somersaulting on the railing, chattering like excited children. The heat was absolute, a physicist’s unified field. There was no breeze at all. North had asked the missionary how long he had been in Africa and he had replied, Years and years, here and there, Northern Rhodesia, southern Sudan, the Congo. This hospital, not far from one of Livingstone’s encampments. A long and distinguished missionary tradition in this part of the world, he said. English, Dutch, Americans, Germans. A proper place for the teachings of Martin Luther and the natives responded, yes they did; they responded to the idea of the divinity of Christ. They responded a little less well to Heidelberg medicine.

  They came at last to the situation. The missionary asked North a few careful questions on the state of affairs in the capital. Who was in charge? Had the government panicked? Was the central market operating, and were prices stable? Was the army loyal? Burkhalter mentioned several names, but North was obliged to shake his head; he did not know who they were. Kleust didn’t either. The missionary spoke a peasant’s rough German, giving them an appreciation of the situation in the countryside; not good, not good at all. There was a vacuum. There was no authority. The constabulary was no better than the run of common criminals, but of course banditry had been common for years and years; even Henry Stanley had to fight bandits. But now there were automatic weapons. . . . The government was a joke, he said in English; its writ did not run. Then he laughed and gave an eloquent shrug of his shoulders. Nor does Martin Luther’s, despite the response to the idea of the divinity of Jesus Christ. He took a swallow of beer and quoted Goethe. North, straining to hear, missed the quote, but Burkhalter’s mordant tone told him all he needed to know.

  Perhaps, North said, if there was aid.

  My God, the missionary said. No. Who would you give it to?

  Well, North said, the government. The government has got to prove it is a government. That it can govern. That is has the balls to do what needed to be done.

  “The balls?” the missionary said.

  I beg your pardon, North said. He had forgotten that Burkhalter was a missionary. In his shorts and floppy hat, he could have been anything; a doctor, for example, or a soldier.

  I don’t understand the expression, the missionary said in English.

  North repeated it in German.

  Burkhalter sighed, and said nothing for a moment. Then he began to reminisce about the village where he was born and raised. He was from the island of Sylt, in the North Frisians. In German legend, people from Sylt were idiots, Dummkopfen. Sylt, barely more than a sand dune in the North Sea, now a resort for Hamburg businessmen, their robust wives, and noisy children. Frisians were always considered inferior, unserious, without imagination. The terrain was too bleak for seriousness. It lacked Wagnerian grandeur. As was well known, Germans were passionate about their physical surroundings. Yet Sylt had never been conquered. Among the German tribes, Frisians had the reputation of—and he swept his hand in a bold arc before him, including the bungalow’s vicinity, every tree, bush, animal, and human being, although there were no human beings in sight other than Kleust’s driver, sitting motionless in the shade of a giant baobab—“these people,” he said.

  “Or Americans,” Kleust said.

  “Herr Kleust,” the missionary complained, clucking with disapproval.

  North ignored Kleust. He did not understand the missionary's anecdote and was not certain how he could explain the American position, in this atmosphere. The heat, the driver dozing under the baobab, the monkeys. “The struggling democracies of the underdeveloped world deserve our support. They cannot do without it.” There was nothing damp or sentimental about the policy. It was pragmatic. Given time, it would send a signal to the old men in the Kremlin.

  The missionary nodded. It was a admirable policy, certainly. The missionary complimented the American administration on its perspicacity. Weisheit. Then, inevitably: “How long have you been in Africa, Herr North?”

  “Fifteen months.” Long enough, he thought but did not say. “I was in Washington for three years.” There was a silence and North looked up. Two vultures circled lazily. He said, “Things are different, with our new administration, younger men with different ideas. Our President has the means to defend democracy here and everywhere. The Communists—”

  “Yes,” Burkhalter said sadly.

  “—don’t neglect these areas. Weapons, advice.”

  “The Americans are not considering an intervention.” It was half statement, half question.

  “No,” North said.

  “Not directly,” Kleust said.

  The missionary smiled and chattered, tickticktick, in imitation of his monkeys. The monkeys fell silent, and the missionary laughed. “This part of the world seems so far from your capital.” He opened his mouth as if to say more, then didn’t. He sat quietly a moment, sipping beer. He said, “Of course, the world has shrunk. I suppose that nothing is mysterious anymore.” He looked at the American. “This, right here, is important to your government?” He stared out across the tawny veldt, where the heat was rising in waves. Nothing moved. The land was profoundly still, simmering in the heat. The baobab had the look of an ancient icon. “Well,” he said at last, “I know what you want. You want names. Who they are, their background, what they believe in. What they want. How they intend to get it.” Burkhalter thought a moment. “I can give you the names, but the names don’t matter. This is not 1848, or 1917. This is not Berlin or Saint Petersburg. It is true they call themselves Marxists. But in office they will behave like model capitalists. They will steal.” That is what powerful people did in this part of Africa, stole. Everyone stole. The importers, the exporters, the moneychangers, the mining concerns, the merchants, the army officers, the civil servants, the missionaries. “These boys will be no different,” he said. Identities were irrelevant. They are somewhere out there, he said, his voice rising. “They are somewhere out there. The land is theirs. They have no single leader. No one man to send to parley, even if they were interested in parley, which they aren’t. Don’t search for Russians or Chinese, they aren’t there. Some of their weapons are, but they aren’t. What do those out there want? They want to run things. And before long, they will. I have lived here a very long time, Herr North. And that is what I have learned. That, and the simple truth that God is present here.” North looked at him. He guessed that Burkhalter was about fifty. But it was difficult to tell. He could be sixty, even seventy. He was fit, powerfully built with iron-gray hair as stiff as wire, and a military bearing to go with an often wistful expression. He said, “What’s your guess? What will happen next?” It was what Washington wanted to know.

  “Killings, perhaps hostages. Whites, if they can get to them.”

  “And if they can’t?”

  “They will,” Burkhalter said.

  North suddenly had a thought. “You?”

  The missionary laughed. “No, I think not.” He looked again at his monkeys, tickticktick. “I am just an old missionary doctor, and besides I have the baobab juju.” He gestured at the tree with its great branches.

  “You could come back with us, Kleust and me.”

  “But this is my home,” Burkhalter said. “If I am not safe here, I am not safe anywhere.” He took a long swallow of beer. “Things are insecure everywhere, would you not agree? Even in the capital.”

  Their driver had disappeared, but now he was back, pointing at the sun. There was just enough daylight to reach the government zone. The missionary offered the driver tea, but he shook his head. It was time to leave.

  North said, “Can they be bought?”

  “Oh, yes,” Burkhalter said, “I expect so.”

  North stood up, Kleust following; no more questions. Burkhalter thanked them for coming, he did not often have visitors from the outside. They were all sweating, saying good-bye. The missionary wa
lked with them to the Land-Rover, its skin hot to the touch. Kleust sat in the front seat with the driver, North alone in the rear. The German stood scuffing his foot in the dirt. He seemed to have something further to say.

  “Do you intend to buy them, Herr North?”

  “Not my decision,” he said promptly, and watched the German frown. “Thanks for your help.”

  “I do not know if it would be a good thing.”

  “You have been very helpful.” North said.

  The German nodded. It was nothing. Anything he could do in the future—

  North said, “If you hear anything—”

  Yes, he said. Then, “My sympathies are with the people here.” He looked at North, and then shyly away; he leaned close to him and said suddenly, “Did you say you worked in Washington?” Without waiting for an answer, he went on. “When you were in Washington, did you know the President?”

  North said that he didn’t.

  “Such an attractive man. And his wife, also.”

  North agreed.

  “And their children.”

  Yes.

  “Such a large family!” He laughed and slapped the side of the Land-Rover. “Do they mean to populate the world? Is it true that the father is a Croesus?”

  “He is very rich,” North said.

  “I would like to meet your President. Do you think he will come to Africa?”

  Sometime, North said. Certainly he would.

  “He is very popular and respected, even out there”—he waved his hand—“they know who he is. Such a young man, it is very good for your country. Once I had planned to study in the United States, but then I came here. Do you think, if he visits—”

  “Absolutely,” North said.

  The driver said something to Kleust, who nodded. He turned to the missionary and said that his ambassador, Herr Zimmerman, sent his fondest regards; then he handed him a bundle of German newspapers and magazines. The missionary’s eyes lit up. Danke, danke. The only news he had had for months was via wireless, the BBC, and the English were not always trustworthy. He grinned and held up one of the magazines, a German picture magazine. The President and his wife and children were on the cover, a formal pose in one of the reception rooms of the White House. They looked like sovereigns of a lucky country, the colors royal blue and a fierce red, the family so poised. The missionary chuckled as if this were a coincidence too bizarre to credit. He backed away and told them to drive carefully, and have a safe journey. God bless, God bless. He waved them off, then retreated into the hospital with his cargo of magazines and newspapers.

  The driver grumbled, they were late; they had stayed too long. Driving down the dry watercourse, back to the dirt road, North had asked Kleust to translate the Goethe quotation. Kleust shrugged, he couldn’t remember. Perhaps they were the poet’s last words, “More light!” Come on, North said; they were a dozen words in idiomatic German, spoken so rapidly he could not understand them.

  Kleust smiled wanly. Very well, he said. “In English, it is this. ‘The Germans make everything difficult, both for themselves and for everyone else.’ ” North smiled and reminded Kleust that he himself was of German extraction. German, and Jewish also. But of course Kleust knew that.

  Kleust said, “I think the point he was trying to make about Sylt was that no one ever conquered it because no one ever wanted it.” An excellent point; but one North neglected to make a month later, when he was back in the United States, summoned to explain to the assistant secretary what he was doing riding in an embassy Land-Rover outside the government zone, in an area specifically forbidden to foreign diplomats; he had exceeded instructions. And the fact that he had been almost killed; that was an embarrassment. No use explaining that he was traveling with a letter of safe conduct, the letter festooned with seals and signed by the colonel in charge of the district. The men who suddenly appeared at the roadblock had not been told, or did not care, or did not read; probably all three. The driver had been killed right away, and it was due to the skill and nerve of his friend Kleust that they had survived—had, in fact, won. That was the truth, but the truth was too simple to be plausible. In any case, it was not a “mature” sequence of events. The assistant secretary prepared a memo for North’s file, the salient sentence being “This officer displayed questionable judgment.” The assistant secretary was a humorless diplomat of the old school, his caution a legend on the seventh floor.

  But in 1963 caution was not everywhere admired. When North was debriefed at Langley the DDCI had smiled warmly, shaken his hand, and said, “Well done!” In the roundabout way such exchanges were made, the DDCI indicated there was a place for him at Langley should he ever become disenchanted with the Department or, smile, vice versa. North was flattered but declined the offer. He had a weekend of celebrity, and in due course received a note from the attorney general. The attorney general definitely admired daring and implied, without quite saying so, that the President had been informed. Everyone knew the President admired daring. Of course within a few months the President was dead. The attorney general went to the Senate and a few years after that he was dead, and there was a new crowd on the seventh floor; and the assistant secretary’s memo was still in North’s Department file, an official file five inches thick (though now perhaps on an acorn of microfilm, the Department being fully computerized and interfaced). Preserved in a vault underground, it would endure as long as the government itself, surviving plague or holocaust or scandal, as the paintings on the wall at Altamira outlasted the civilization that produced them. Dossiers were never destroyed; they were part of the permanent record, the institutional memory. “This officer displayed questionable judgment.” Read that: You fucked up, and we knew you fucked up. At Altamira there was a drawing of a bull escaping a lance. The lance was poorly thrown. A sixteen-thousand-year-old fuck-up; a fuck-up from the Ice Age.

  The assistant secretary was now retired, though occasionally one saw him walking the halls, a consultant to the Secretariat, always in a hurry, impeccably tailored. He was an influential Old Boy, having retired with the rank of ambassador; everyone knew he had a photographic memory, and never forgot a friend.

  “Shit.”

  On the other hand, he had survived, too; a career minister now, soon to go to Bonn as chargé, running the place while a Sun Belt entrepreneur entertained industrialists and made speeches about the American Way—

  “SHIT!”

  He turned, irritated, his reverie broken. Kleust and Burkhalter, the Land-Rover, the dark green forest, the attorney general, and his own twenty-seven-year-old self feathered away into the darkness, out of reach. He was back in the present moment, in the moody fluorescence of a Washington facility, surly nurses and steel furniture. He looked at the clock: 2:30. He had gotten it all back in twenty-two minutes, his memory on fast forward. Well, not all; it would take another few minutes to get it all. The boy was moving his hand in front of his face, dispelling the disgusting odor. North shifted position to extinguish the cigarette, then changed his mind. The boy irritated him; he did not want company. He wished he were alone in a wooden bed, with the ashtray with the Cinzano logo, talking to the doctor who smelled sourly of wine. He had a hard time believing in the African hospital, in the same way that the missionary doctor had a hard time believing in Kirchner’s Berlin; but that was where he wanted to be. And thinking about that, and about Africa, he shivered. He realized suddenly that he was slick with sweat, and trembling; his hands were trembling. He stared at the ceiling, composing himself. He was a fifty-year-old man, he told himself; and Africa was long in the past. Perhaps Elinor could find a Cinzano ashtray, and a poster of a violent African dusk. He said, “What did you say?”

  “The smoke. It stinks.”

  “Sorry. I thought you were asleep.” He put the cigarette out. He looked at the ashtray and saw three cigarette ends; he had been chain smoking.

  “It woke me up.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “You don’t know what it�
�s like.”

  “No, I don’t.” He closed his eyes.

  “It’s a son of a bitch,” the boy said. “And you were talking to yourself. I couldn’t make out what it was,” the boy complained.

  “Just as well,” North said.

  “My neck itches.”

  “Shall I call the nurse?”

  “No.”

  The boy fell silent and North turned over, fluffing the pillow. The cotton was cool on its underside. Elinor had brought the good linen. He closed his eyes, listening for sounds in the corridor. He was half in, half out, of Africa. That Kleust, what a Fritzie piece of work. They had been friends for more than twenty years, following each other around the world, one posting to another, always of equivalent rank, usually embassies in the Third World, until Kleust got a Class A embassy five years ago. Kleust was more popular in his Foreign Ministry than North was in his. North had sent him a congratulatory cable in German, Goethe’s quotation. Kleust had been in Ottawa, and now was back in Bonn, a director at the Foreign Ministry. He had been hoping for Washington, perhaps as minister. Bonn was hypnotized by Washington, the American connection so fraught, Bonn always nervously deferential, worried that in its frenzied obsession with the Evil Empire the U.S.A. would forget the ally on the Evil Empire’s western doorstep, the first cat to be kicked. And the neurotics who conducted the nation’s business in Washington! Playboys, megalomaniacs, felons, Baptist preachers, film stars. To be a minister in such a capital! And Kleust loved the embasssy building on MacArthur Boulevard, a great hulk of glass and hardwood; its Wagnerian superstructure bore a resemblance to the Gneisenau.