by Julian Beale
He yawned as he drank down the last of his wine and stretched out in his wicker chair for a nap in the hot sunshine. He felt utterly secure here. He had owned this two-bedroomed cottage for over ten years and came to it only rarely. It was not far from the village in the valley, less than a kilometre, and approached by a narrow road which wound its way up the hill so that Cestac enjoyed a fine view over the surrounding country and had clear vision of any car or person making their way towards him. Behind his dwelling, the road petered out into a bridleway, seldom used. He never entertained a visitor here, he had no phone line. His small hire car stood in the yard, ready to take him shopping or to one of the local restaurants. He did not encourage conversation with the simple people of the community. He valued his loneliness. It was here in the Dordogne summer that he could pull up his drawbridge and truly relax. He closed his eyes and nodded off.
Cestac had no idea how long he slept, nor what disturbed him. He woke with the thought that the rustle had something to do with the half wild cat which earned her right to stay by keeping down the vermin in the little outhouse. He had arrived this year to find her with a litter of mangy looking kittens and maybe their antics had woken him. But he kept motionless with his eyes closed while his brain worked to identify the noise which he decided had been more of a slither than a rustle. Then he heard a human voice and could not prevent himself from sitting bolt upright as his eyes widened.
‘Good afternoon, M’sieu,’ the voice repeated and then, ‘I apologise for interrupting your siesta.’
A short man of slender build stood before him in the dust of the yard beyond the small terrace. He appeared to have a drawn face and a sallow complexion, but it was hard to be sure as he was wearing both a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses. Tucked into his black jeans was a simple, dark blue shirt with long sleeves buttoned down to encase his arms. On his right wrist was a large watch with a larger strap, and against this he was stropping a knife held in his left hand. It was a constant, restless movement which produced that rustling, slithering noise.
Cestac felt threatened and his sanctuary violated, but he kept his voice steady as he replied.
‘What do you want and how did you get here? Are you lost?’
‘Not lost, M. Cestac, no. I came on my motorcycle, but the long way round and I left it way back up the track behind you. I don’t do noise.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘I provide protection. I’m very good, very discreet. I attack also and I have been hired to assassinate you M. Cestac. But you are an interesting man. It seems that you are alone by choice. You have no friends and no colleagues. Nobody likes you, but all respect you. You move in the shadows and you are hard to find. All of that interests me. I could kill you now and collect on the contract I have agreed. But I believe it would be better for us to work together. I want a permanent position and a challenge for my skills. You are a wealthy and a powerful man but your only security is to hide yourself. That gives you no guarantee. I can. So now you have a choice. Die in pain, or hire me.’
Thierry Cestac was an evil man without standards or scruples. But he was a realist and he did not lack courage. He considered these alternatives and found them a fair statement of fact. But he did have a riposte.
‘You are making assumptions. How do I know you’re good enough for either?’
A thin smile appeared briefly on the gaunt face and the eyes behind the dark glasses must have flicked to the left to take in the writhing bundle of kittens playing together in the sunshine. He spoke as his left hand dropped down by his side and sunshine flashed on the bright blade of his knife as it flexed in his fingers.
‘Black and white,’ he said softly as the arm came up into a throw and the knife flew to bury itself with surgical accuracy in the throat of a kitten, which seemed to dance in its mid-air play before crumpling into a motionless form in the dust.
Cestac said, ‘They’re all black and white: but impressive even so.’
After a pause he added, ‘What do I call you?’
‘Toussaint.’
KINGSTON OFFENBACH — 1984
In November 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, King was still active in Africa with the CIA. As Reagan started his first term in Office, he might hardly have heard of Liberia, but matters changed over the next four years, mostly at his own initiative, and there were reasons for his interest in this unsettled African State. By mid-year 1984, with King moving up in the Administration, and recognised as the CIA expert on Africa, the prospects of Reagan going on to a second term were looking starburst bright. He knew he wanted to concentrate on the world stage, building himself the reputation of a statesman. He was preoccupied with the Soviet Union and the so called Star Wars programme which might have been technically impossible but it did grab headlines. Ronald Reagan, ever the showman protruding from the costume of an actor slightly manqué, knew that you can’t have too many first night triumphs even if they are in the boondocks rather than on Broadway and he had been pleased with his military success in Grenada.
He thought he would look for another opportunity to build his image and Liberia caught his attention. It is a country unique in Africa because it was founded for and by freed American slaves. Liberia owes nothing to the drive for colonisation by European powers in the 19th Century, but is a creation of the USA. What better springboard from which to launch a fresh era of benevolent American influence in Africa?
Liberia had suffered a life changing coup in April 1980 when President Tolbert and many colleagues in government had been assassinated in a particularly bloody rebellion orchestrated by a lowly soldier, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe who trailed guts and disorder in his wake. Reagan had been persuaded to permit an official visit to Washington by President Doe in 1982 and, in a disparaging private aside at the time had remarked that ‘Doe is enough to convince anyone of the merits of slavery.’ Two years later, he was scheming to cajole this semi-literate thug into being his footstool, at the same time sending a clear message to the Soviets that they should no longer expect the USA to stand aside while they spread communism throughout Africa. The added bonus was that haughty imperialism was a sure winner amongst hometown American voters who liked to see a proper degree of respect for America, right around the globe.
Flushed with overwhelming victory in the polls of November 1984, Reagan decided on immediate action and on Monday 3rd December, the State Department sent a delegation to Liberia. Its three members carried a brief for President Doe which amounted to a none too subtle bribe. America would provide an aid package to restore the economy, a US Military presence to ‘guarantee regional security’ and there would be ‘advice on governance’. In straight language, we’ll pay you to do as you’re told.
Doe produced an interesting response, saying he had a better idea. The USA was to give him half the proposed aid, but in payment to his bank in Switzerland and he would then return the messengers who were now languishing in the high security jail outside Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. This, of course, produced consternation in Washington. Reagan’s well respected Secretary of State, George P Shultz, was furious that they had got themselves into this messy and unnecessary situation. The US Ambassador in Monrovia, William Lacy Swing, was obliged to report the abduction of the three Americans at midday local time on Friday 7th December, just when Washington was waking up to the commemoration of Pearl Harbour forty-three years previously. King Offenbach was put on immediate standby while the Administration figured out what to do next. King was CIA, he’d been knocking around Africa for years and hell, he was even the right colour. Surely he could come up with the ideas to get them out of this fix.
But King couldn’t. His business had never taken him there, he knew no one in the country and had only been into Monrovia once, to change planes. Well whatever, they said, he had more knowledge than any other guy, so they hauled him back to Langley and Foggy Bottom to sit through some interminable crisis meetings, at the end of which the Administration decided that it had
to pay up as a lousy alternative to welcoming home the three US citizens ‘in small pieces’ as the message from Doe had made clear — and he was believed.
So King was sent off as the bagman, armed only with his wits and a locked briefcase which was manacled to one wrist and contained two sheets of impressively heavy White House notepaper, both blank but clearly signed by the President of the United States of America, and two money orders from Treasury, the first for the full amount demanded and a second for a much lesser figure. He just had to do the best he could, and he was given this instruction personally by Shultz before he left for London and the Ivory Coast.
On 18th December, King took the Air Afrique flight from Abidjan to Monrovia, his insides churning at the challenge of getting back out again and his mission made no easier by the identity of the three captives, of whom none had been in black Africa before and one was a woman. Their leader was Robert E Macrum, a former Marine of sound reputation and grouchy personality due to the badly busted leg which had retired him early. He was accompanied by Ernest Wallinger, a nearly seventy Croatian born Jew who had never left the US since escaping there from Hitler’s Germany: he was a prodigious statistician and a homosexual to boot. Thirdly, there was Melanie Stockton, a founding partner in Proudson and Partners, recognised as the preeminent public relations advisor to governments worldwide. Perhaps not so well known in Africa, King thought to himself, and presumably this soignée, elegant lady had been asked to publicise that America was returning to Africa with a Stetson hat and saddlebags stuffed with largesse.
What an almighty, goddamned mess. He was met at Robertsfield, the international airport fifty kilometres outside Monrovia. An immense paramilitary escort accompanied him from the plane to a cavalcade of black Chevy Surburbans drawn up on the tarmac and they screamed off with motor cycle outriders and klaxons blaring. It was not a relaxed drive for forty minutes before they pulled into the courtyard of an imposing, colonial style building.
King was ushered straight through the hall and into a spacious office with full length windows overlooking gardens. A long desk stood centrally and a man rose from behind it to greet him.
‘I am Major Andrade, Head of State Security. I believe you are Mr Kingston Offenbach, representing the President of the United States of America in this matter. Please take a seat’, and he gestured to chairs set around a coffee table.
King was content to overlook this grandiose, self-serving introduction as he made an assessment of the Major, of whom he had heard much from Ambassador Swing over guarded phone links. Andrade was a neat man, slight in build, a little below average height, sallow in colour with a head of very black hair and a pencil line moustache. He was ominously quiet and controlled. There was the threat of evil in his looks and mannerisms.
Andrade broke the silence. ‘You have brought with you all that is necessary to complete our business?’
King lifted the briefcase chained to his wrist in unspoken answer. Then he posed his own question in the form of a statement.
‘I will need to see my colleagues, however, before we can proceed with the arrangement concluded between our Heads of State.’
‘Very well, Mr Offenbach, I can accommodate you in that request, but there will be some delay. Macrum, Stockton and Wallinger are being held at our detention compound for high risk detainees. It is some way from here. Their transfer will take over an hour from when I issue the instruction.’
King was not going to rise to this self-importance. He sat and waited. Andrade continued,
‘This building is my Headquarters for State Security. Suspects come before me here for questioning before they are ... moved on’. There was meaning in that slight delay as he continued, ‘but you will not wish to be delayed. Let us proceed to study what you have brought with you. I am empowered by our President Doe to approve the detail.’
I’ll just bet you are, you little bastard, King thought to himself as he kept his demeanour and gazed back. He had suspected and was now certain that Andrade was the brains and the prime mover behind this whole deal. It was rumoured and had been confirmed by Ambassador Swing that Doe was now a hophead and close to incapable of thought for himself. King placed his case on the table between them and busied himself with the tumbler locks. He left no possibility for Andrade to read the numbers as he rotated them, and he caused further distraction by asking a question.
‘You are evidently in a position of great authority, Major, and yet you are not a national, I believe. I understand you are Cuban by nationality?’
‘You are well informed, Mr Offenbach, and you are correct although it is some years since I was in Havana. I am here because I gained the confidence of our illustrious President and now I am indispensable to him. They have plenty of brawn in this country, you understand, but not so much brain, and no understanding at all of the finesse required for international relations. But before you open your case, do you wish me to summon your Ambassador. I anticipated that Mr Swing would be present to witness the matter.’
King was not displeased to note the smug confidence in this toad. He replied easily.
‘No thank you, Major Andrade. It is better for our Ambassador to remain uninvolved and more fruitful for him to concentrate on the development of the relationship between the peoples of Liberia and the United States.’
Andrade looked momentarily disconcerted but he smirked knowingly. ‘Very well.’
King maintained his advantage. He removed the money order for the full sum demanded from his case and passed it to Andrade for inspection.
‘You will note that it is in three copies, Major. One for President Doe, one for me to retain, the third for your approval and signature please. When you are satisfied, I will replace all three in my case until my colleagues are returned to me.’
There was a long pause as Andrade scrutinized the document in detail and King surmised that the Cuban was using the time also to commit his confidence to the handover arrangement as proposed. Finally, he spoke.
‘That is satisfactory, Mr Offenbach, ‘he said rising and moving behind his desk where he picked up the telephone and gave an instruction in hectoring tones.
‘And now,’ he said returning to stand in front of King, ‘now we have about an hour to wait. Come with me and I will show you around here. I believe you will find it instructive. You may leave your case if you wish. It will not be moved.’
King gave a wintry smile as he rose, ‘that will not be possible’ he said indicating the chain which bound the handle to his wrist. Andrade shrugged and led the way from the room.
The tour which followed was all too familiar to King. They visited a series of rooms on all three floors of the building in which the occupants — almost all men and all in uniform — were seated at battered desks or peering into decrepit filing cabinets. All of African state bureaucracy was there, the normal smell, the dust and decay and grubbiness: all the piles of files which he would find from Benghazi to Brazzaville. The Major maintained a monologue of explanations, but there were no introductions. There was much springing to attention and flamboyant saluting but the coal black faces remained closed and unwelcoming.
They returned at last to the hall and Andrade stopped by the one door through which they had not yet passed.
‘This is our waiting room for those being held for interview’, he remarked with a gleam of anticipation in the dark eyes. For King, the first sensation was the smell which hit him in a blast. It was pure Africa, the combination of heat and sweat and dust and dirt. It was overlaid with a greater pungency, a rancid, penetrating mixture of urine, blood and excrement: sharper still was the stench of human terror. He stood motionless in the doorway and let his eyes wander.
The room was oblong in shape and measured maybe five metres by three. The walls on three sides were of plain concrete, roughly finished. The ceiling was crudely plastered with holes through which could be seen the steel floor formed in the room above. The fourth wall was made up of windows, sealed into their concrete surroun
ds. These had a few cracks which spoke of poor workmanship but which provided the single source of ventilation. There were no blinds or curtains and the blazing midday sun made a furnace of the room.
There were six occupants of this hell hole, three men in rags and a fourth, completely naked and stretched out on the floor. Two bulky guards stood roughly at attention as they saw the Major: each held a heavy rubber truncheon dangling from his hand.
Andrade flashed a quizzical expression but King refused to comment, knowing how much the Major was relishing the effects on him of this little peep show. They withdrew to return to the office and King noticed that one of the guards followed them. He glanced at his watch. The hour had almost passed.
Andrade turned to say, ‘make yourself comfortable, Mr Offenbach and I will go to supervise the arrival of the prisoners. They were foolish to come and will be fortunate to leave, but they did not have suffer our waiting room for too long — no more than twenty-four hours as I remember and there were some fringe benefits.’
King forced a neutral expression onto his face, refusing to ask the questions and knowing that Andrade could not resist continuing. What an opportunity to taunt the CIA and the whole American ideal. The Major spoke again.
‘Poor Mr Wallinger is elderly and became distressed quite quickly. He tried to run for the door, but was of course prevented by my guards. They’re big fellows as you see,’ he waved a hand at the uniform which had followed them in, ‘and perhaps he quite enjoyed a little of their black muscle. Your retired Colonel Macrum also became agitated because he can neither sit nor stand for long. His language was offensive and he must have been quite a fighter in his glory days although he was no match for my people when they had to subdue him. I expect the new pains of a broken head and a few smashed teeth took his mind of that bad leg of his.
But it was Ms Stockton who surprised me most. A most attractive and spirited lady so I had her removed to my office here where I could entertain her properly.’
