Rogue's March

by W. T. Tyler

  Cecil was disappointed that Bondurant could clarify so little. He’d arrived in the expectation that the new council was well and favorably known to Bondurant, to be told that contact had already been established, and that the full details of the events of the past two days could now be explained to him.

  Bondurant had quietly disabused him of those hopes. Cecil’s face had fallen. “I’m most anxious to reassure London, you understand, but I rather suppose it will all come clear in the next few days, don’t you? I mean it usually does. The city is already peaceful again, despite those gunshots during the night. The question of diplomatic recognition won’t arise, will it? We recognize nations, not regimes like you chaps. We may be a bit slow establishing contact, however. God knows we don’t want to go running about encouraging colonels everywhere to go smashing established authority, do we? Well, I suppose, we’re all in the same boat,” he offered sympathetically, “drifting in the same fog. If it’s any consolation, the French, Belgian, and Israeli embassies are as much in the dark as everyone else.”

  “It isn’t,” Bondurant replied. “No other country has provided military and economic assistance at the same level as we. No other embassy was thought to know as much as we either.”

  “Quite, oh yes. One forgets that side of it.” Cecil’s look traveled toward Reddish, as if the rebuke might have been intended for him. Extraordinary eyes, he’d often thought—brutally cold, they seemed, like some of the South African farmers he’d met. The way they got after treating some of these Kaffirs in their own coin, he supposed, all the color bleached out. He had forgotten to ask Carol Browning about Reddish. He assumed Bondurant had been very cross with him, as he’d been with Major Murray, his own attaché, who’d proved to be such an ignoramus as the streets were going berserk.

  “That does make it more difficult for you, I suppose,” Cecil sympathized, remembering a piece of information that might cheer Bondurant up. “By the way, I understand our Russian friends are to be sent packing. The French and Belgians are convinced of it. Quite inevitable, as a matter of fact. I find the logic quite compelling. Have you heard anything?”

  “I heard something this noon from Simon Lowenthal,” Bondurant said without enthusiasm.

  “What’s the logic?” Reddish asked.

  “Straightforward enough,” Cecil answered cheerfully, eager to explain something to the Americans. God knew his opportunities were rare enough. “If N’Sika does as the radio announcement promised, put the rebels and their weapons on display at Martyr’s Square, he has no choice but to send our Soviet colleagues packing. The weapons were Russian-made, after all. N’Sika can hardly accuse Federov of subversion, of attempting to overthrow the old regime while maintaining the status quo ante, can he? The Russian Embassy is at minimal staff level now. The next step backwards will be a rupture in relations.” Cecil smiled eagerly, trying to win some enthusiasm. “This Colonel N’Sika will have no choice.” He waited, his smile fading. Bondurant’s apathy seemed unshakable.

  Bondurant and Reddish watched Cecil go back up the walk to his car.

  “If it were logic we were dealing with, I might feel reassured,” Bondurant confessed, “but after what you’ve told me, I don’t feel reassured in the slightest. What do you think?”

  “I think they’ve got enough problems without taking on the Russians. I don’t think they’re interested in making more enemies.”

  “Are they sophisticated enough to understand that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? None of us knows what kind of men we’re dealing with, except that they’re killers. How much do you trust this new source of yours?”

  Reddish had told Bondurant everything that he’d told Masakita, attributing it to a source in the workers party. But he hadn’t told him about Masakita or the defense attaché officer supplying Agency reports to Major Lutete at G-2.

  “He was there. He saw it happening.”

  “But do you trust him?” Bondurant watched him suspiciously.

  “I trust him,” Reddish said indifferently.

  “It’s grotesque, irrational!” Bondurant exclaimed, his disapproval vented: Reddish might have been talking about his broker. “All of this simply to justify a murderous grab for power by a few hoodlums! Several hundred terrified, untrained, undisciplined Africans given access to useless guns and then shot down in cold blood to justify bringing down the regime—”

  “Some of the jeunesse already had guns of their own. I’m not sure they planned on the jeunesse using those guns in the crates.”

  “Then that’s even more irrational. They must have known we’d discover it in time, that they couldn’t conceal it from us.” He turned to see Reddish’s reaction. “They were too clever.”

  “They were worried about us,” Reddish said. “They were getting ready to knock off a regime we’d helped create, we supported. So they were worried about what we might do. They cooked up a plot that sounded credible, a reason to legitimize the coup—a radical grab for power which the President couldn’t cope with.” The adrenaline he’d felt earlier that day had drained away; Bondurant’s agitation seemed far remote to him. “If we found out about it, we’d be too late. We’d have to lump it, like everyone else. I think they’re still worried about us. They’re soldiers, this new council. They’re in over their heads. People who are in over their heads do stupid things. Someone needs to calm them down, tell them to take it easy.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “They’re killers and they’re scared,” Reddish continued. The breeze lifted again from the river, and he watched it move high in the trees, not touching the motionless waters of the pool. “Someone needs to talk to them, settle them down, give them some sense of security. A word from us might do it.”

  “Do you mean to sit there and suggest that we hold out our hand to these people? To tell them that we’ve seen through this murderous little charade, but that’s all right now!” He leaned forward contemptuously, trying to draw Reddish’s gaze, but Reddish deliberately avoided him, looking toward the front gate, where Becker’s sedan was entering.

  “They’re not Russians, they’re Africans,” he replied, “but what you said yesterday at the country team meeting still holds. They’re armed and they’re blundering around in the dark. There’s no use sitting here babbling to ourselves about it, getting pissed off. We ought to open up a channel to them. We will anyway. It’s just a matter of time.” Even without turning, he felt Bondurant’s choler rise.

  Lowenthal and Becker left the sedan with Colonel Selvey. The houseboy pointed toward the rear garden, and the three men started down the walk toward the pool; but Bondurant, too provoked to reply to Reddish’s proposal, stood up impatiently and waved them back to the house. “I’ll be with you shortly! Go on inside, have a drink!” They turned and Bondurant remained standing, watching them enter the house. “You haven’t mentioned this to them?” he demanded, still furious.

  “No, not to anyone.”

  “Then I prefer that you not.” He picked up his poplin jacket from the back of the chair. “I understand now why you were so obstinate yesterday in the country team meeting, refusing to suggest any Soviet complicity. You knew this then.”

  “No, not all of it.”

  “But most of it.”

  “It wasn’t a good cable. I debriefed a Cuban defector two months ago. He told me Havana had imposed a moratorium on Cuban activity in the region and that the Russian Embassy in Brazza was enforcing it, so I didn’t think the Cubans or the Soviets were involved. His documentation was better than Becker’s. It was a poor cable.”

  “And your own, have you written yours yet?” Bondurant’s voice was still chilly.

  “I was waiting until I talked to you.”

  “Good,” Bondurant said. “Have yourself another drink while I deal with them. I want to talk some more after they’ve gone. And I don’t want you to breathe a word of this to anyone, not even Langley, until I dec
ide how we’re going to handle this bloody mess.”

  Bondurant went back to the residence. A few minutes later a white-coated houseboy came down the walk to the pool carrying a silver tray with a gin and tonic. He didn’t know Bondurant’s servants, and he didn’t know this one; but the man was smiling at him as if he were an old friend and jabbering all the while in Lingala. At last, after a few questions, Reddish understood what he was saying. He was telling him that his brother had once driven Reddish from Kikwit to Idiofa in a government Landrover with the provincial governor. They had had lunch together, Reddish and his brother, in his native village, where his sister had given them palm wine. Did he remember?

  Reddish remembered. The trip was two years past and three hundred miles away, but the houseboy, who hadn’t even been there, described it as if it had happened yesterday. How they knew these things, he didn’t know, but they knew them, enclosing foreigners like himself in a gossamer skein so finely drawn that a breath might blow it away; few saw it, fewer knew it existed; yet it was there, embracing them all.

  The sedan drove away, and Bondurant returned carrying copies of two telegrams. “Becker’s heard that the new council will break relations with the Soviets,” he said, sitting down again. “Decidedly conservative apparently, these colonels—right-wing hoodlums—although that’s not what their cable says.” He handed Reddish the cables. “Does that offend you?”

  “Does what offend me?”

  “Characterizations such as that. Is that why you’re so anxious to establish contact with them—to re-establish that special relationship you enjoyed with the former President?”

  “I hadn’t even thought of it.”

  “But if they were a little to the right of center, these army officers, that would make it all the easier for you, wouldn’t it?” Bondurant waited, thinking he’d guessed the strategy. “Majors and colonels are much more malleable than social democrats, aren’t they?”

  Reddish didn’t reply, reading the cable. Becker had written:

  COLONEL N’SIKA’S PRINCIPAL ADVISER IS MAJOR JEAN-BERNARD DE VAUX, A BELGIAN OFFICER WHO FOUGHT IN INDO CHINA AND ALGERIA AND DISTINGUISHED HIMSELF AS A MERCENARY MAJOR DURING THE INFAMOUS SIMBA REBELLIONS. HE WAS HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM BY THE FORMER PRESIDENT AND THE ARMY HIGH COMMAND WHO CONSIDERED HIM PART OF THE GHQ “BRAIN TRUST.”

  LIKE COLONEL N’SIKA AND THE OTHER COUNCIL MEMBERS WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO IDENTIFY, DE VAUX IS A POLITICAL MODERATE AND PRO-WESTERN IN HIS ORIENTATION.

  “You know de Vaux?” Bondurant asked as Reddish returned the two cables, as disappointed as Cecil had been.

  “I know him.”

  “Selvey believes he has access to the council,” Bondurant continued. “Evidently, he’s been cultivating a Major Lutete on the foreign intelligence staff at G-2 who is a brother or cousin of this other Major Lutete who’s Colonel N’Sika’s deputy. Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “If we’re to open up a channel to this new council, I’d prefer it not be Colonel Selvey,” Bondurant considered, wavering. “I told him to do absolutely nothing for the time being.”

  They sat in silence. The wind stirred again in the trees, high up, where the golden light of late afternoon lay entangled. The shadows were beginning to encroach from the garden wall; the night guard appeared to turn on the pool lights.

  At last Bondurant stirred. “We both know what will happen,” he admitted. “You have to be fatalistic about it, I suppose. If Colonel N’Sika proves to be someone we can work with, as Becker and Selvey believe, then no one in Washington is going to be too concerned about how he seized power. They’re not going to be inclined to look behind the facts as they know them. But you may be right. Frightened men do irrational things.” He paused, his silence burdened with misgivings. “As much as I despise it, it might be wise if you were to open up a back channel to this new council. I suppose you could manage it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Tonight, if you can. Assure them that they have nothing to fear from us, but that we’re concerned about internal stability. There should be no more bloodshed, no more killing. What’s done is done.”

  He stood up wearily, putting his empty glass aside. They circled the pool toward the walk, Bondurant still thoughtful. “I find it curious that Colonel Selvey was so eager to exploit this connection of his. This Major Lutete.” He lifted his head as they went back up the walk toward the residence. “I take it Colonel Selvey wasn’t in any way involved in this?”

  The same idea had occurred to Reddish and still troubled him. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Not you either, I assume.” Bondurant stopped suddenly, the possibility occurring to him for the first time.

  “No, we weren’t involved, not in any way.”

  “I’m to take that on faith, am I?”

  Reddish groped for reassurance. “If it had been my coup, I would have just taken the presidential compound. If I’d planted guns in the party compound, I would have told them to pop the pins, give them old Belgian ammo gone to green cheese, then cover their tracks later.” He continued along the walk reflectively, head down. “But maybe someone wanted a shoot-out, which was stupid. They butchered it up, whoever planned this thing. They were lucky it didn’t blow out of control. No, it wasn’t me.”

  He stopped, looking back at Bondurant, who’d stopped in his tracks, terrified. Now he caught up with him. “A few hundred bewildered, untrained Africans are given guns and then shot down to justify someone’s obscene grab for power, and you tell me the idea wasn’t at fault, just the execution. You amaze me, Reddish—absolutely bewilder and amaze me.”

  “You asked me whether I was involved.”

  “I know what I asked you! Good God, man, listen to yourself sometime! Just listen! You think like they do! No wonder you found them out so quickly! But it’s not just them. You’ve got us all at a disadvantage!”

  He left Reddish standing there, like a leper, and went back to the house.

  Reddish couldn’t reach de Vaux that evening. The switchboard operator at the para camp refused to put through his call. He drove out through the dark streets to the hillside para camp where the new Revolutionary Council had its headquarters. The lieutenant at the gate refused to let him through. Reddish folded five hundred francs in his carte d’identité, passed it to him through the window, and explained that de Vaux was expecting him. The lieutenant motioned him to the side of the road beyond the gate, where Reddish waited, still stung by Bondurant’s rebuke.

  In the Far East once, one of Reddish’s fellow case officers had been sent home by the ambassador after he’d bought a local newspaper editor and had been found out by the minister of information, a notorious anti-American voluptuary. The ambassador had known informally of the arrangement, but after the recruitment was publicized he had sent off an outraged self-righteous cable to State demanding the case officer’s removal. Langley had obliged. “I’m fucking tired of doing their goddamn donkey work,” the recalled officer had told Reddish the day of his departure. “I do their fucking stud work for them and then the lights come on, they get caught, and they snivel on their pillows like a convent of bloody virgins—the ambassador, the DCM, the whole crew. But turn out the lights again and see what happens! They all come back to the dildo, every last one of them.”

  Like Bondurant, Reddish remembered, watching the lieutenant through the Fiat window. Ten minutes later, the officer crossed the roadbed from the guard shack to tell him that the council was in night session and de Vaux unavailable. He said he would send a message to de Vaux telling him Reddish had been at the gate.

  He returned to his villa, fixed a drink, and sat in the study, tired, fed up, and lonely. The telephone awoke him three hours later, the drink barely touched on the table in front of the sofa.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Reddish,” the commo watch officer said, “but I thought I’d better give you a call, just in case. We just got it over the ticker. Agence France Presse, Reuters, and AP put it on the wires a
bout five minutes ago.”

  “It’s all right. Put what on the wires?”

  “The executions. They shot the President and six cabinet ministers at zero hours thirty, local, something called the National Revolutionary Court. AFP says the executions took place at the old para camp prison. They also executed fourteen mercenaries for crimes against the people, quote unquote. Do you think I should call the duty officer or do you want to tell the ambassador and Becker yourself?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Tell me about Lowenthal,” Cecil asked slyly, nibbling a biscuit. “Is he really the Francophile he appears to be?”

  “He’s nice, actually,” Carol Browning replied.

  It hadn’t occurred to Cecil that “Francophile” might require definition; he decided to let it pass. He sat propped up in bed, pillows at his back, his nakedness half covered by a spread. She sat on the edge of the bed, hair in disarray, wearing only his wife’s dressing gown, a size too large for her. Cecil was helping himself to the biscuits and cheese they’d brought from the kitchen to the upstairs guest room an hour earlier. Two glasses and a bottle of claret sat on the bedside tray with the plate of biscuits.

  “Nice? That’s a rather bland word, isn’t it? Something of a nit, I should say.”

  “Besides, he’s very intelligent, despite what people say.”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure.” He could only guess at what she meant by intelligence, since hers, he’d discovered, seemed almost nonexistent. Cognition was, for her, largely intuitive and tactile, but he had no idea what these signals meant to her as they reached the cerebrum. “What about the colonel, Colonel What’s-his-name, the little chap with the buttonlike eyes?”