Rogue's March

by W. T. Tyler

  He stood there remembering it all again; and when the tall white-robed figure rose from the far end of the room where he’d been sitting silently, his breath was withdrawn and his muscles were as weak as water, his strength denied him; and he couldn’t raise the weapon as he stared at the tall white-robed figure whose face was blacker than any he’d ever seen. A moment later he seemed to remember the face, but at that instant the two Africans behind him smashed the recollection from his head, and he fell forward across the cot, gun clattering to the floor, his unconscious body lying across the lifeless, lacerated body of the poor cousin that de Vaux had sent to Kisangani on the pretext of awaiting his father-in-law’s corpse.

  Chapter Five

  Les Haversham was still youthful despite his forty-nine years, his brown hair untouched by gray. He was slender, loose-boned, quick with a smile or a handshake, unfailingly courteous with outsiders, always careful at a cocktail party or a reception to remember a first name, a preference in wines or beverages, details of a previous assignment, hopes for the future, where your children were. Embassy wives thought him charming, military spouses debonair, junior diplomats what they would like to become. Somewhat liberal, gray-eyed, dressed in gray tropicals, a button-down oxford-cloth shirt, and a rep tie, he seemed the embodiment of the American ethic abroad, committed to the principle that politics was a manageable dividend-paying enterprise, like any other kind of business. Imbued with that ethic, he would never deliberately overthrow a foreign government, arrange a massacre in the streets, or assassinate a president—no more than Ford would blow up General Motors, since such bad faith exceeded his operational franchise and outran his moral base. What he would search for were more practical, promotional schemes that would give him a competitive advantage over those who sought what he sought—dominance in the political marketplace.

  He was annoyed with Reddish’s reporting to Langley on the Malunga episode, because it put the N’Sika regime in a poor light in Washington. There were those in the State Department or in Congress eager to find excuses for reducing their cooperation with military regimes, especially those who’d seized power as brutally as N’Sika. These same policymakers were searching for ways to reduce US arms sales, and the N’Sika regime would continue to seek US military assistance. Reddish’s cables, circulated in Washington and undoubtedly leaked to the Hill, would have the net effect of complieating relations with the new National Revolutionary Council.

  Reddish and Haversham had had an argument in the latter’s office the week following Reddish’s return from the interior. Reddish was touchy and out of sorts. He had received no word as to his future assignment, although his replacement was already on the way. His own departure was less than ten days away. He’d told Haversham nothing about the Masakita episode and was skeptical about the general amnesty announced while he was on the boat from Benongo. The council had claimed that police and army posts in the interior had been alerted a week earlier and were busy preparing the inscription of old renegades and new rebels on the amnesty rolls. He’d seen nothing to support this. He thought the council was lying.

  Masakita’s letter was still in his pocket, undelivered. He’d twice attempted to see de Vaux, but had been unsuccessful. He’d learned that de Vaux’s security responsibilities had been taken over by Major Fumbe.

  The station suite was deserted that evening. Everyone else had gone home.

  “I think you showed poor judgment sending those cables out,” Haversham said distastefully, feet lifted to the corner of his desk as he reclined lazily in his swivel chair, toying with a letter opener. “By then, the damage had been done. It was all ancient history. No one needs to know how N’Sika pulled this job off. All a postmortem could do would be to stir up a few creeping Jesuses back in Washington who piss down their legs every time you talk about military regimes.” Despite the vernacular Haversham practiced behind closed doors, his voice had the same cultivated drawl to it, like those heard around the Cosmos Club bar. “I don’t want to make too much of this, Andy, but I think you’ve put us on the spot.” He brought his feet down, avoiding Reddish’s eyes. “After what you’ve told Washington about N’Sika’s planting those MPLA guns in the workers party compound, a few people are going to worry about getting into bed with him. It doesn’t do us much good out here telling them where the bodies are buried.”

  “What’s Langley said?”

  “What could they say? Nothing, not a word. I’ll bet someone is spreading your paper all over town by now.”

  “What was I supposed to do, sit on it until you came back?”

  “It might have helped.”

  “Helped who, you and Selvey?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You know how N’Sika and his crew tracked down those guns, don’t you? Because you and Selvey told them where to look. You gave them our reports on MPLA arms shipments and Miles bootlegged them to G-2.”

  “It was routine liaison,” Haversham said, coloring. “DIA had already approved it.”

  Reddish sat forward aggressively. “Liaison for what? What liaison? It was make-work, all of it! Major Miles’s little paper mill that was going to get him promoted to light colonel! That’s all it was—a piece of factory garbage, like everything else DIA turns out! You know that as well as I do!”

  “Selvey asked for my cooperation,” Haversham persisted. “I owed him one for all the times he let us use the attaché plane. I was trying to give him a hand.”

  “It was stupid, all of it! What are you really afraid of? That someone’s going to tie you to that shoot-up in Malunga? You can relax then. I left that part out of it.”

  “Yeah, that’s just peachy, isn’t it?” Haversham retorted, stung. “Left us out of it? How? Do you think those guys back there are stupid? It doesn’t take any little Jew-genius with some Senate committee staff to figure out that maybe it was us that fingered those MPLA guns. It’s not me I’m worried about, it’s the Agency. Did you ever think of that? Christ, no! You lost a few people, lost control, and tore up half this town trying to find out who shafted you. Then when you found out you sent in those cables to get yourself off the hook. By the time those cables spring a leak somewhere on the Hill or the New York Times, you know what it’s going to look like, don’t you? That the Agency was behind it, that we rigged the whole frigging mess from the very beginning. Did you ever think about that? Christ, no! You were too busy covering your own ass. So what if the Sovs weren’t behind it? Maybe for policy reasons it might have been a good idea to let everyone think they were for a while. You didn’t think about that either, did you?”

  Reddish stood up. For Haversham, Africa was just a skirmishing ground, high-grass tactical terrain for ambushing the Soviets, nothing more. “Screw it,” he said.

  Haversham got up too. “What the hell’s wrong with you anyway? Why are you so goddamned touchy? I come back after three weeks and you’re not even here. You’re off in the bush, dicking some French babe. Do you know why I stayed away—the whole three weeks? To give you a chance to show your stuff, to let you run the station for—”

  “Just screw it,” Reddish said, going through the door.

  He had a drink that night, not at the French reception for a visiting deputy from the Quai, where he’d promised Gabrielle he’d meet her, but alone, sitting in the rear garden, wearing a shirt but no tie, coat and tie both discarded on the kitchen chair. He had no enthusiasm for the reception and no will to tell Gabrielle he’d been unable to see N’Sika. He was in the kitchen replenishing his glass when the phone rang. It was Gabrielle, worried, telephoning from the back hall of the French Ambassador’s residence. She’d thought something might have happened.

  “No, nothing’s happened.”

  “But why aren’t you here?”

  He didn’t answer, studying the clock on the kitchen wall, but it was her face he was watching, brought back by the intonation of her voice. It was as if she was there, next to him. He saw the doubt touch her dark brows when sh
e was troubled, the way her lips still held the sound after the word was released, still in sorrow.

  “Don’t give me any lectures,” he said.

  “But I’m not giving you a lecture.” He knew she would be smiling and he didn’t know what he could tell her. “Is something wrong?” Her voice came back, softer than before.

  “No, nothing’s wrong. How’s the reception?”

  “Noisy. Very noisy.”

  “Why don’t I come get you then?”

  “Now?” She was surprised.

  “In ten minutes. Meet me at the front gate.” He didn’t give her a chance to answer.

  The French Ambassador’s residence was near the river. The verges of the road were lit with flares and lined with sedans and limousines. A dozen policemen on foot kept the arriving vehicles moving and the gate free of congestion. Reddish ignored them and pulled into the drive. A policeman waving a red-lensed flashlight came toward him angrily, but Gabrielle appeared just as he reached the car, running lightly in front of the headlights, wearing a long skirt and shawl.

  “Houlet stopped me as I crossed the garden,” she told him breathlessly, her cheeks flushed, her scent suddenly filling the car. “Where are we going?”

  He sensed her excitement. “To my place,” he said, his eyes on the road. He thought she was disappointed and without knowing why he remembered suddenly the heart-break of his first formal dance thirty years earlier—a car like this one, a dark night, a girl with a gardenia in her hair, and a father waiting behind a porch light for the daughter a young man had promised to bring home by midnight.

  At his villa, the night guard was waiting, holding the gate open. They reached the privacy of the study where the lamps were lit, still in silence. She took off her shawl, looking around at the room. “So you still have his letter.” He didn’t answer and she turned to see his face. “He said you had no hope in his government, no faith in your own. It’s true then, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.” He jerked the drapes closed, shutting away the flickering fire and the shadow of the night guard under the avocado tree. “You shouldn’t have gotten mixed up in this.”

  “You’ve said that before. Is that why I haven’t seen you?”

  “No.”

  “Because you had nothing to tell me?”

  “I can handle the letter. It’ll take a little time, but I can manage it. That’s not the problem.”

  “What is it then? Why have you been acting so strangely?”

  “You—you’re the problem. You’ll be leaving in a few days.” He was searching the desk drawer, looking for the liquor cabinet key. “You expect too much. I can’t change things. What do you want to drink?”

  She watched him cross the room to the small cabinet. “You believe the letter matters more to me than anything else, don’t you?” she said sadly. “Just the letter.”

  “The letter won’t change things. It won’t make any difference. Nothing will.” He didn’t know how he could make her understand that.

  “But you went all that way, all the way to Funzi, and now we’re here and you’ll give N’Sika the letter.”

  “When I find out how to work it.”

  “Then what more could anyone ask?”

  “A hell of a lot more than I can deliver.” He didn’t know what he was doing. The liquor cabinet was already open, the bottle on the kitchen table, where he’d left it.

  “You don’t have any hope, do you?” she repeated, coming toward him.

  “Only in what I can deliver.”

  “And you think I do. But so little that it will all be changed if you fail in this?”

  She had crossed to where he stood, her face as calm in the lamplight as it had been that morning on the boat and the misty evening afterward, its mystery the same, holding him then as it held him now.

  “I don’t want you to expect too much, to make it too hard on yourself,” he said.

  The answer was already in her eyes. “But how could I expect too much when so much has already happened? Nothing will change that, don’t you see? It’s you who expects too much, as if you’d never failed before.”

  “I’m not thinking of me.”

  “How can I make you understand?” She hadn’t moved.

  “We’ve only got a few days left,” he said uncomfortably. “The Houlets won’t be waiting up for you, will they?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What is it?” He thought he saw her smile.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head.

  “What is it? It’s something.”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s all rather strange. For you it probably doesn’t matter so much, you’ve done so many interesting things, but for me it’s all been very special. It’s nice to know that interesting things can still happen to you after all this time, that everything isn’t locked away. It’s something I shall never forget. The trip, the people we saw, everything. It’s hard to believe it’s over.”

  “Nothing is ever over,” he said, relieved. He took her arm. “Let’s go sit in the garden. It’s better out there.”

  Dawn was coming when he finally drove her back to the Houlets’.

  “What day is it?” she asked sleepily, her lips dry, her hair awry, her head back against the seat.

  “Don’t ask. Maybe Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday,” she murmured, her head still back. “Next Tuesday I’ll be in Paris.”

  The sky had lightened, a gray chill he didn’t welcome as he took her to the door. As her face turned toward him, pale and anxious, it seemed to him now that there was nothing about this woman he didn’t know.

  “What time?” he asked.

  “Tonight? Seven? Seven-thirty?”

  “Seven,” he said.

  Ambassador Federov also failed to appear at the French reception, his absence much more conspicuous than Reddish’s. No longer the silent, watchful presence, he’d become the eager, ingratiating diplomat, discovering in N’Sika a political foundling, history’s innocent left on his doorstep, eager to learn what Moscow could teach.

  Federov had sent N’Sika ideological texts and books, newspapers, daily press bulletins, all in French, even a desk set with a cast-iron miniature of the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin and an onyx inkwell. He’d also persuaded N’Sika to agree to the visit of a delegation from Moscow led by a group of African scholars from the Academy of Sciences, several officials from the Soviet-African Friendship Society, and a few middle-level civil servants from the ministry of foreign affairs.

  But he’d received some disturbing news that afternoon, reported by the Russian Ambassador across the river at Brazzaville. Priapkin claimed that two Chinese diplomats from Peking’s mission in Brazza had met secretly with N’Sika to arrange the normalization of relations with Peking. The same rumors had circulated in the capital for several days. Klimov had dismissed them, convinced that his own source would have immediately reported any such meeting and moved to prevent any opening of diplomatic relations with Peking. After Priapkin’s report had been received that afternoon, Klimov had hastily left the embassy compound for a clandestine meeting with his source on the council.

  Federov was waiting under the overhang at the Soviet chancelry for his car to be driven around when Klimov’s sedan appeared at the front gate, returning him from his rendezvous. The younger man slid quickly from the front seat, not aware of Federov until he called out to him.

  “What did he say?” Federov asked, smartly attired in dark suit, white shirt, and bright figured tie, his attention already drawn away to the pleasures of the evening awaiting him.

  “What else could he say?” Klimov laughed hopelessly. “It’s done, finished. The announcement will be made at eleven tonight.”

  The limousine drew to the curb ten feet away but Federov didn’t stir, frozen in place. “They recognized Peking?”

  “Tonight, yes. The idiot sat through two council sessions and
made no objections—none at all. N’Sika decided two days ago.”

  “But why? Why now?”

  “Because they are idiots, like Lutete himself! Because nothing here has any logic to it, nothing at all! Just a drunken dream, like those sheep on the council.”

  “But N’Sika said nothing to me—”

  “Like Lutete, that idiot! I must go send word.”

  Klimov disappeared into the foyer, leaving Federov standing in the half-light of the overhang. His chauffeur waited, holding the door open, but Federov stood shrunken and cuckolded in a vapor of eau de cologne, studying his driver’s face as if he were a total stranger, a thug, or hooligan holding open the door of a Black Maria.

  He turned woodenly and went back into the foyer. Waiting for the lift, he seemed to forget where he was.

  The most dangerous among us are those who refuse to understand that the struggle against imperialism is a sham unless it is inseparably linked to the struggle against opportunism. You will report to the Ministry of Education in Uzbekistan where, as vice deputy for administration, you will have the opportunity for that quiet reflection which will again enable you to know the face of the enemy.

  The letter was from the chief of cadres, drafted by Federov himself in Moscow and sent to an inept Soviet ambassador in Zambia. As he entered the cage, he searched for the button for the eighth floor, his old floor at the Foreign Ministry on Smolenskaya Square, but couldn’t find it. The present lost to him, he stood in bewilderment, oblivious to the musky African night. Before he could collect his thoughts, the doors closed with a pneumatic hiss, the cage lifted, and he was carried aloft, a confused prisoner in a metal room, certain of nothing but the sweat that prickled his armpits and the mist that gathered like sea fog on his steel-rimmed glasses.