Rogue's March (8 page)

De Vaux entered Colonel N'Sika's conference room at the back of the hall. The iron shutters had been drawn and the room, airless and warm, was lit by the ceiling fixture overhead. Colonel N'Sika sat at the head of the table, a large man with powerful shoulders, neck, and arms, his glossy black face glistening in the heat, the color and texture of an eggplant. His short-sleeved khaki shirt was wet under the arms and along the V of the neck. On the table in front of him was a holstered side arm. At his side, drawn up on a chair, was a portable radio tuned to a security channel. Three other para officers, all majors, sat along the table in front of him, their holstered arms also on the table. They looked on suspiciously as de Vaux took his seat at the end of the table. On the wall behind him was the portrait of the President in morning coat and the blue and yellow sash of the republic, the colors muddy and indistinct, the face as lifeless as a rotogravure photo.

“He said nothing, you told me,” N'Sika began curtly, his dark irisless eyes fixed on de Vaux. His voice was deep, carrying effortlessly across the room. “You said nothing has changed. What did he say?”

“He had a report Soviet guns were hidden in the capital, brought from across the river.”

“He knows then.”

“He suspects something.”

“How does he suspect, why?”

“He wouldn't say.”

“Finished then.” Major Fumbe sighed. He was a short moonfaced officer, with bulbous eyes giving him the look of sleepy gluttony. “Finished.”

“So what will he do?” N'Sika demanded, turning to him. “Send in C-130s, Belgian paras, Green Berets now, like you claim? Like Stanleyville? Crush you like the Simbas. Of course, when you talk like that.” He turned back to de Vaux. “What did he say he would do, what did he threaten?”

“Nothing, no threats,” de Vaux said. “We talked. He's worried about the embassy and his ambassador. His ambassador is worried. That's all he cares about.”

The door opened and a major joined them, sweating and out of breath from his jog through the trees from the motor pool, where the trucks were assembled. Seeing the holstered side arms on the table, he unbelted his own and sat down heavily.

“Take off your hat,” N'Sika ordered. Sheepishly, like a forgetful schoolboy, he pulled off his cap. “What else did he say?” N'Sika asked.

“Just that. He's worried about the safety of the embassy and the ambassador. That's why he came.”

“
He
?” Major Lutete leaned forward. “He? He is the ambassador.
El Capo. Numero uno
.” He was thin, his skin pale and pockmarked, like a
métis
. “Of course.”

“Who?” asked the newly arrived major.

“Reddish,” Lutete replied. “CIA.” He pronounced it as a single word, in two syllables. “Of course.”

“So what will he do now?” N'Sika asked.

“He'll tell his ambassador not to be worried.”

“What did he say about the President? What did he ask?”

“I told him the President was sick, senile, useless, an old man corrupted by fear and everything else. He understood.”

“And what did he say?” N'Sika asked.

“Nothing.”

“
Nothing
?”

The room was silent. The four majors gazed at de Vaux suspiciously. From beyond the door the para officers were talking softly among themselves, waiting.

N'Sika leaned forward, almost angrily: “And so what else did he tell you? ‘Go do this thing, but do it silently, like a dead man's sleep, a virgin's dream, no blood spilled, no American blood, no President's blood!'”

The four majors were suddenly uncomfortable; de Vaux's face was as cool as ever. “No, not a word about that. How it's done isn't his business. It's the way it is with men like that.”

N'Sika sat back slowly, his eyes still on de Vaux; but Major Lutete wasn't satisfied. “And after it is done, what will he do? He will tell his government, he will tell Washington. Then Brussels will know, Paris, everyone—”

“Afterwards doesn't matter,” N'Sika said. “By then it will be too late.” He looked at Lutete's pale face. “Besides, what will he tell them? The President moves three million dollars to Zurich—dollars, not francs. Everyone knows—the ministry, the Central Bank, even my chauffeur. Even your driver. But what does this man Reddish do? What do the Americans do? Nothing. Nothing except give him more dollars for the rural roads, ten million this time. Jean-Bernard is right. That's the way it is with men like that, your friend one minute, your assassin the next. Open the shades, open the windows.”

Major Fumbe and de Vaux rose and pulled open the iron shutters as the others watched. Sunlight flooded the room, lighting up the presidential portrait and the map of the capital positioned on the tripod to the left of N'Sika's chair. Suddenly conscious of the President's glazed, dusty stare, one of the majors got to his feet and pulled the frame from the wall.

“If the Americans care nothing, as de Vaux says,” Major Fumbe grumbled, returning to his chair, “why do we bother with Masakita and the
jeunesse
?” He sat down heavily, the bulbous eyes heavily lidded, gluttony gone, face glistening with water. “Why not go directly to the
présidence
.”

N'Sika turned in irritation. “And what would the army do then? Where would GHQ send its helicopters? To kill you, me, and the rest of the paras. If the President's generals and the rest of the army need a reason not to fight us, Masakita is the reason—”

“Lutete could go now, talk to the chief of staff—”

“It is too late!”

“It is not such a good plan,” Fumbe muttered. “No. Masakita is trouble.”

“It is the same plan we talked about last week, the week before. Where were you then, sleeping! What is different now that it is going to happen?”

“The Americans know,” Fumbe replied weakly.

“It was Reddish who went to Kindu to see the guns there,” Lutete said. “Who can trust this man? He helped hire the mercenaries. He was with the President during the rebellions, always with the President …”

His voice died away. They waited in silence watching Colonel N'Sika, who sat with gaze lowered, toying with a cigarette package. He removed a cigarette without lighting it and continued to turn it in his hands like a child's puzzle.

The phone rang suddenly. Fumbe and Lutete sat up frightened. N'Sika didn't seem to hear it. As it rang a third time, he lifted his head and nodded to de Vaux, who swiveled in his chair to lift the receiver from the table behind him.

“It's Kadima.”

N'Sika got to his feet to take the call at his desk in the corner. He listened frowning, turned toward his colleagues, who silently watched his face.

“Yes, all right,” N'Sika said. “Yes, I understand. No, if you must go, you must go. Yes, he might be suspicious. But call me from the airport. I may have some news. All right. Yes.”

He hung up and came back to the table. “Yvon Kadima said he must go to Brussels this afternoon for the President, a private mission. His plane leaves at four o'clock.” His voice was tired.

“So it's over,” Major Lutete muttered. “He's told them.”

“He's planning something,” Fumbe said. “He knows something.”

“Of course he's planning something,” N'Sika replied. “Of course. To save his own skin. He had no heart for it, not from the first. Kadima was a mistake. Your mistake.” He looked at Major Lutete. “But our mistake now. Each of us.” He lit the cigarette finally and crumpled the package. “He thinks we'll fail now, that the army won't join us, the army, the police, everyone. You see the weakness now, don't you?—the poison that's spread everywhere, even in this room. Every place you look, the same—”

“Kadima told Reddish,” Lutete broke in. “Told him the way he's told him everything all these years, whispering in his ear.”

“The police won't be with us,” Fumbe said. “With Kadima against us, the police too—”

N'Sika said, “Who will go for Kadima?”

The four majors were silent, surprised.

“Who will go for Kadima?” N'Sika repeated, searching the black faces around the table.

“I'll go,” de Vaux volunteered quietly from the end of the table.

“No!” Major Lutete objected, “not de Vaux! Keep him with Major Fumbe, where he can keep an eye on him. He spends an hour with Reddish and tells us nothing. Now Kadima! What else? Will he go to the prison and bring out his mercenaries? Go to the President next? Who can trust him? Send Captain Olinga.”

“Olinga will have to go to the police camp at Bakole to keep the police in the barracks. I can't send Olinga.” He turned to Fumbe. “Send your captain, the tall one from the north.”

“So we go ahead?” Fumbe asked, surprised.

“At five o'clock.”

“But what about Kadima, Reddish?” Lutete said. “What about the mercenaries? The President will send for them, like before. He'll give them guns.”

“Kadima will be taken care of. Major de Vaux will handle the mercenaries. Reddish doesn't matter.”

“If the President can't trust him, how can we?”

“Reddish? Because of what Jean-Bernard has told us. Because he came here to say he didn't care where our guns are pointed so long as his people are protected.”

N'Sika stood up and buckled on his holster.

“He's not to be trusted! He'll arm the mercenaries!”

N'Sika hesitated, looking down at Lutete's thin face. “What are you saying—
trusted
? Who's to be trusted? You, me, Major Fumbe there, who's frightened still of Masakita after all these years, like the army! All of you, who're worried about these mercenaries? Are you like the President?” he shouted, angry now, his patience gone. “Are you weak and corrupt, like him? Because if you're weak and corrupt, you have no choice but to trust men who'll deceive you, deceive you because you're weak and corrupt! So sit there like a coward and talk about trust, or get to your feet and join us!”

They all stood, lifting their holstered arms. De Vaux remained behind with N'Sika, following him to the desk in the corner. Only after the door closed did Colonel N'Sika lift his head to glance scornfully toward the corridor and then at the Belgian.

“They are all women,” he said, “each of them, each what the President has made him.”

Chapter Seven

At four-thirty that Sunday afternoon, the American Ambassador was alone at his residence on the river, an enormous stone villa with ivy-covered colonnades shaded by towering African hardwoods. A gently sloping lawn curved away from the rear of the house and down through the trees to the great pool of the river. In the front of the residence beyond the circling driveway was another lawn bordered by gardens and flowering trees within the high wall. At the rear beyond the frangipani and flame trees was a turquoise-green swimming pool.

It was a brilliant sunlit afternoon with a mild breeze blowing high in the trees, the distant drowsy rustle the only sound to be heard. Ambassador Bondurant was in the back garden when the Belgian Ambassador telephoned. He took the call at the poolside bar, dressed in sagging seersucker gardening shorts, leather sandals, and an old polo shirt. Under one arm was a pair of long-handled pruning shears, under the other two books cradled together, each held open in its middle pages by separate fingers of his right hand. One book was a copy of a British historian's essays, just received in the pouch, read that morning after breakfast, and the second a history of Soviet foreign policy 1929–39, drawn from his library. He'd been toiling in the garden that afternoon, pruning his absent wife's roses, when a passage from one had fused with a passage from another. It was this discovery he'd been pursuing when the telephone overtook him.

His caller was the Belgian Ambassador, who told him that fighting had broken out in the native commune of Malunga, where the socialist workers party was believed to be in armed revolt. Fighting had also erupted at the sprawling Bakole police camp on the outskirts. Two Belgian police advisers had been seized as hostages; a third had escaped and was in critical condition at the Swedish hospital. The Belgian military attache believed Cuban infiltrators had come from Brazzaville during the night and had joined the socialists, reinforced that afternoon by a ragtag group of political exiles hidden among the crowds who'd come over on the ferry to see the soccer match at the stadium.

“I've asked to see the President,” the Belgian shouted above the turmoil in his own suite. “I've just spoken to Bintu, the
chef du cabinet
. We've scheduled a meeting for six o'clock. Could you join us?”

“Yes, certainly,” Bondurant agreed, perplexed. “How did the fighting start?”

“No one is sure, but it seems to be spreading. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you.”

“The paras are trying to close off Malunga, but some of the insurgents have fled to other communes.
Hello
! Have you heard anything?”

“No, nothing at all. At six, you say? Yes, I'll join you at six. I'll call my people in the meantime. Yes, at six.”

He put the phone down uneasily and turned back up the flagstone walk toward the house. In the center of the drive he paused, head lifted, listening; but he heard only the sound of the breeze from the river rustling high in the trees. The iron gates were pulled closed, and the African watchman sat dozing in his wicker chair, his transistor radio on his lap. He listened for another minute and continued on into the house, entering through the reception hall and following the black and white marble floor along the corridor to his right to his study, a deep high-ceilinged room with white woodwork and white bookshelves cluttered with the memorabilia of thirty years of diplomatic service. On the walls were prints from Berlin and Vienna, consular exequaturs from his early posts, and ambassadorial commissions from his recent ones. Two colorful modern abstractions on loan from a New York gallery hung behind the long couch. Behind the desk was a fragment from a Roman mosaic, retrieved from the southern coast of Turkey by his children during a holiday after the war.