Rogue's March (25 page)

Reddish looked again at the cable as Lowenthal droned on.

“… we've known for some time about the paramilitary camp at Mundi,” Lowenthal observed as an addendum to the cable was being passed out, “although we didn't deduce its specific purpose at the time. You'll recall we did a cable on the subject a few months back.”

Reddish remembered that Lowenthal had gotten excited about the AID officer's report on the Marxists-Leninists at Mundi and had cribbed the most colorful passages for his own cable to Washington, reporting a paramilitary brigade in the making at the agricultural camp. He also knew that few would recall.

“What cable?” he broke in carelessly.

Lowenthal gave him an injured stare: “The workers party camp at Mundi. You remember. We discussed it in draft.”

“I don't remember anything about guns. Did you say anything about guns at Mundi?” He wanted to slow the momentum.

“Not at the time, no.”

“So no one reported anything about guns at Mundi.”

“No, not guns,” Lowenthal replied, surprised now. “But certainly everything else.”

Colonel Selvey stirred restlessly in his chair; Bondurant peered at Reddish, troubled. Becker lifted a cable from the file folder in front of him: “The cable's here if you want to look at it. Go ahead, Simon.”

“Your sciatica acting up?” Selvey grumbled as he slid the cable toward Reddish. Reddish studied it without interest as Lowenthal described the party's radical ties, Masakita's background, and the ten Komsomol scholarships.

“… on the other hand there was nothing ambiguous about the origin of the weapons identified in Malunga. Every eyewitness tells us pretty much the same. The French and Belgian accounts are congruent with our own. So what we know certainly suggests Soviet involvement in one form or another, as the announcement over national radio hinted last night.”

Reddish looked up quickly. “Was that the hint?”

“Sorry?” Lowenthal turned blankly.

“The radio said ‘radical elements,' not Soviet involvement. Was that the hint?”

“Which?”

“That the Sovs were behind it.”

“We've been through all that, Andy,” Becker intruded. “We've discussed precisely what the radio announcement did and didn't say. Dick has the transcripts if you're interested.”

Franz pushed a wad of wireless reports in front of Reddish.

“Let's let Simon finish,” Bondurant ruled.

Lowenthal took an additional ten minutes. “I think that just about sums it up,” he concluded. “If I've left something out, we can pick it up in discussion.”

Becker sat back, beginning to poll the table. The economic counselor contributed a few comments. Deliberate, slow-witted, he was a man no one wished ill, but he was usually ignored in executive policy sessions. Becker and Lowenthal had ignored him that morning, and now he drew their attention to their omissions: rising prices, two devaluations, the student and transit strikes of the previous spring, all evidence of growing popular discontent with the regime.

Reddish listened as the voice rumbled on like a coal train past a crossing: IMF statistics, external debt financing, cost-of-living indices, commodity prices.… Lowenthal began to fidget, pencil dropped aside.

Throw him a sop, Reddish thought, teeth on edge. Get him on board, for God's sake.

“If we didn't go into those details, it was because we believed them implicit,” Lowenthal said consolingly. “We've reported a great deal on the subject over the past several months.”

Almost as if you knew, Reddish's gaze seemed to say as it traveled to Lowenthal.

The economic counselor nodded, not convinced.

“We were also concerned about brevity,” Becker conceded sympathetically, “but you may be right. Why don't you give us some language, a paragraph or two. Don't you think that would do it?”

“Oh certainly, that would do it.” He turned to the two economic officers sitting against the wall behind him. Their pencils began to move.

“Concluding that the workers party knew far better than most the economic malaise in Malunga,” Lowenthal suggested. “After all, they helped organize the transit strike.”

“Something like that,” Becker murmured with a libertarian's vagueness. “General Leggard?”

Newly arrived from Germany and the First Infantry Division at Göppingen, the general had a soldier's sense of the battle zone, bright colors on bright maps with plastic overlays. He'd spent two days in battle dress during the Czech crisis, which had taught him a thing or two, Reddish remembered: the Russians were Nazis with atomic artillery and Fishbed fighters.

“You say here a low-risk opportunity for the Sovs,” the general began, remembering his strategic intelligence brief at Frankfurt six months earlier—shipping lanes, strategic minerals, overflight and landing rights. “I'm not so sure about that. It seems to me the stakes are pretty high—the strategic stakes I'm talking about. This is the high ground in Africa. If this country goes, then everything south of here will go too in time. So I'm not sure I'd agree with that—a low-risk opportunity for the Russians.”

“I meant opportunity, General, not the stakes,” Becker replied soothingly. “A low-risk opportunity for Moscow. If these rebels succeeded, well and good. If not, then they'd lost nothing for the time being. The Soviets have been shut out locally, as you know. Since they weren't directly involved with the shoot-up in Malunga, it was a low-risk opportunity. I agree with you completely about the stakes. They were very high indeed.”

Reddish found the language in the cable he was searching for and underlined it. “
Soviet and Cuban involvement seems clear.
”

“Anything else?” Becker queried cheerfully.

“Yeah,” Reddish said, sitting up. “Now that we've got your conclusions straight, why don't we talk about the evidence.”

“I was under the impression that was what we'd been discussing.”

“You just told the general that the Soviets weren't directly involved, but the cable reads ‘Soviet and Cuban involvement seems clear.' So which sheet of music are we singing from? Do you know something I don't?”

“What we meant was that the Soviets weren't directly involved,” Lowenthal put in. “Physically involved, I mean. Certainly it's not as if they fired the guns themselves. The rebels did. No one's accusing them of that.”

Bondurant's frown deepened.

“But then they never are,” Becker quickly added, smelling an impasse.

“You mean it's not Czechoslovakia,” Reddish said immediately.

“Not precisely that, no.” Becker smiled.

“Precisely what, then? You're saying the
jeunesse
were Soviet surrogates, Russian stooges.”

“Is that a question?” Becker asked, still smiling, like a tutor coaxing an errant pupil.

“No, not a question. You're saying that the
jeunesse
were Soviet stooges.”

Becker frowned theatrically, gazing at the ceiling. “No,” he replied finally. “No, that's too blatant.”

“For the cable or for the Soviets?” Reddish said recklessly.

“Come on, Andy,” Selvey growled, suddenly uncomfortable.

Irritated, Becker said, “I think I agree with Abner. We aren't playing with words. We all know precisely what we mean.”

“I don't,” Reddish retorted. “I don't know what you mean at all. You've tied the Russians to the shoot-up in Malunga. How? That's all I want to know. How? What do you know that I don't?”

“You mean you
don't
agree about Soviet involvement?” Lowenthal asked weakly, hurt.

“Exactly. I don't agree at all.”

“I take it then you don't think the weapons came from Brazza,” Becker resumed.

“I think I'd agree they probably came from Brazza.”

“But you disagree about Soviet and Cuban involvement?”

“I think it's a mistake to lump the Soviets and the Cubans on this issue. Their interests don't automatically coincide.”

“Agreed, but it's naive to assume the guns could come from Brazza without Soviet and Cuban knowledge. Would you agree with that?”

“Probably,” Reddish said, “but knowledge doesn't mean complicity. Sanction either. I assume the Russians might have known, but it's only an assumption. What I know is that there's no hard evidence to support this statement in the cable about Cuban and Russian involvement.”

“What we
know
is that the
jeunesse
had Soviet guns,” Lowenthal insisted.

“We're going around in circles,” Selvey muttered, looking toward Bondurant, who sat motionless, listening.

“I agree,” Becker added, throwing down his pencil. “I agree completely.”

Reddish said, “If we're going around in circles, it's because you always come back to the guns, and the guns don't prove a goddamned thing. Why can't you face up to it? Abner knows that as well as anyone else. A year ago there was an attempted coup in Brazza. Some of you remember. Afterwards they shot the plotters and put US-made M-14s on display at the stadium. They claimed we supplied them. We didn't, but it didn't matter. They had the guns. Abner got the serial numbers from the French military attaché and we tracked them to a 1954 shipment to the Greeks. They had our guns all right. They came out of DOD inventories, but they didn't get them from us and it wasn't our coup. We were clean, but they had our guns.”

The faces at the table turned toward Selvey, who sat forward uncomfortably, half embarrassed, half angry. “What's your point,” he asked, “that someone planted Russian guns on those bimbos in Malunga just to dish the Sovs? Jesus Christ, Andy!”

Bondurant peered coolly at Selvey over his glasses. “His point was that Brazzaville's evidence last year was as good as yours today. Do you disagree?”

“But we're suggesting possibilities, not writing a writ,” Becker complained, still appealing to Reddish.

“Precisely,” Bondurant continued. “Precisely why we must be careful here. Others will interpret it however they wish, whether it has a factual basis or not. I agree with Reddish that the language of the cable goes considerably beyond the facts that are known to us.”

The room was silent. Bondurant peered about him, disappointed. “I fully recognize the need to identify Soviet and Cuban plots where they occur,” he resumed quietly, “but I think we give Moscow far too much credit when we find its fingerprints on every smashed teacup in the pantry.”

General Leggard and Colonel Selvey sat with suppressed anger, shrunken within their starched khaki uniforms. Becker's expression was fatalistic; Lowenthal's held the pain of a personal wound. Bondurant gazed at them, bemused. “I also happen to think it's quite dangerous,” he added, “dangerous for them, dangerous for us.”

“I wonder if you would amplify a bit for us,” Becker suggested politely, the acolyte now returned to the procession.

Bondurant hesitated. The room was respectfully silent; the silence drew him on. “For what it's worth,” he began, “I believe that Soviet weapons support for an obscure little party with no popular base and no hope of achieving one would have been irrational. Soviet behavior may sometimes be rash, but it's not unpredictable. Nevertheless, most of you seem convinced, even without evidence, that Moscow is capable of that kind of recklessness. I'm not, not yet, at any rate. It's possible that Soviet policy may one day go suddenly berserk, whether in Africa or elsewhere, but I don't believe that day has yet come.

“I think we bring it closer, however, when we accuse Moscow of irrational behavior on the flimsiest of evidence. Accusations of that nature get circulated elsewhere as hard fact. They also make it impossible to understand what Moscow is really up to. You can't anticipate an adversary if you continually falsify his actions. The most you can do is stir up those in Washington and elsewhere who are already frightened enough of what they refuse to understand to believe the worst.”

He gazed about the room, not confident he had their understanding, even if he had their attention. “When that happens,” he continued, “then our own policy voices take on the same clumsy aberrant character, with the result that neither side understands any longer what the other is talking about. To me, as I said earlier, that is truly dangerous—two frightened, confused, dangerously armed men shouting at one another in a language neither understands. To the other, his adversary is a lunatic. For me, both soon will be.” He put his reading glasses back on and peered at the draft cable in front of him. “So that is what I meant. Coping with real problems in Washington is difficult enough. Coping with fictitious ones makes policy coherence impossible. So that's all I meant. What Mr. Reddish has in mind, I'm not sure. In any case, the language suggesting Soviet and Cuban involvement should be struck from the draft, as Reddish proposed.”

“I sometimes have the impression Bondurant is a bit too generous,” Dick Franz observed, descending the outer stairway. “He imagines
they
think as he does—a Moscow version of the Foreign Affairs Council.” He slipped on his sunglasses.

“Why didn't you tell him then?” Selvey demanded, irritated at Franz's silly smile.

“Oh, it wouldn't do. A law of survival, isn't it?”

Selvey saw Reddish leave the door at the top of the steps and waited for him in the courtyard below.

“Whose ass were you covering, anyway?” he wanted to know. “What the shit were you afraid of, that some GS-18 back at the Agency would think you let the goddamn Russians come sneaking in the back door while Les was on leave.”

“It was a bad cable.”

“Maybe you know something we don't.”

“Not yet.”

“Then you're covering your ass.”

“Vigilance against policy incoherence,” Franz quipped.