by W. T. Tyler
Selvey turned as they drove out, watching him through the rear window. “Is that what the President’s gonna protect us with? Where’s his tepee and squaw.” He winked at Reddish and nudged Lowenthal in the front seat. “Is that bird one of yours, perfessor?” Lowenthal didn’t turn.
Twice they were stopped by roadblocks. They talked their way through the first, but at the second the soldiers were more stubborn. Unlike the paras Reddish had seen in Malunga, they seemed less sure of what was going on and more frightened. They also wore steel helmets. Selvey had finally drawn the lieutenant away into the shadows and given him a thousand francs.
“How much?” Lowenthal asked as they drove forward again.
“A thousand,” Selvey muttered, still angered by the trooper’s insolence.
“That’s a month’s pay, isn’t it?” Lowenthal asked. “One of their grievances, why extortion is so blatant?”
“For Christ’s sake!” Selvey shouted.
“Just turn it off,” Reddish muttered to Lowenthal. “For God’s sake, not now.”
The parliament building was dark. In the residential quarter along the river the air smelled of mown grass and flowering trees, all mixed with the musk of the great gland of water itself. The lights of Brazzaville glimmered from across the great pool. The streets would be quiet over there, the diplomatic missions closed—Cuban, East German, Russian, Chinese, and North Korean—but their staffs would be listening to the radio, wondering if this was the night the government across the river would die in the streets. For them its death was inevitable. Reddish watched the lights, troubled, wondering which jackals would drag off the bloody corpse.
After almost four years, he believed its end inevitable too.
The moon was high over the river, untouched by clouds as he watched it. Years ago, on a night very much like this one, he’d been declared persona non grata by the Syrians after he’d been compromised by a ministry of defense official with documents to sell—Soviet weapons agreements that supplied the sort of detail not available in those days: unit prices, terms, financing, barter clauses. Entrapment, they’d discovered later. He’d spent three days incommunicado in Al Mezze prison near Damascus. During the interrogation, a team of KGB advisers shuttled between the Soviet mission and sûreté headquarters. On the fourth night, he was driven to the border and released to Lebanese authorities. He’d been without sleep for two days. As they pulled him from the car to remove the handcuffs, a Syrian interrogator had broken the two small fingers of his right hand.
“The tools of ignorance again,” his father had said when he’d learned Reddish had taken a job as a weapons specialist with the Agency’s technical services division after his army stint. In the small Wisconsin college town where the townspeople still turned out for the spring baseball games, he was remembered as the catcher who’d hit .385 his senior year, but had failed his tryout with a Chicago Cubs farm club. He’d played Legion ball that summer. In the Agency, he was still remembered as the case officer who’d been PNG’d in Damascus, some blue-collar technician out of Legion ball.
Reddish climbed from the car in the ambassador’s drive, the fatigue of the past six hours settled in his joints like rheumatism. He stopped for a minute to flex the stiffness from his back and legs, listening to the wind rustling in the treetops. He had no enthusiasm for the meeting with the ambassador. He knew he couldn’t talk to him here and make sense. It was a different world.
They gathered in the ambassador’s study, Bondurant deep in his armchair next to the sofa, Becker next to him in a wing-backed chair. He was a Princetonian, like the ambassador. His short gray hair was carefully brushed to one side as it must have been during his undergraduate years, with the same mannered precision that marked his ambition, his conjugal habits, his drafting. The mouth was thin without being humorless, the blue eyes brisk without being unkind. He was clever, but with the intelligence of a banker or broker, an actuarial keenness which might have made him a success on Wall Street. Why he’d become a diplomat, Reddish never knew. Spontaneity meant for him a day on the tennis courts, where his enthusiasm was that of a small boy. Diplomacy meant for him neither vision nor art but administrative success, which solved problems as they were defined. He was, for Reddish, merely another careerist, a man who, after twenty years, could never be persuaded that bureaucratic truths weren’t also moral and historical ones.
Lowenthal sat silently on the sofa with Reddish, watching Bondurant nervously as he read the cables they’d brought. Selvey puffed on a thin cigar, gaze lifted toward the modern abstractions hanging on the study wall. They’d never made sense to him but took meaning with his mood—circus balloons on bright afternoons, goiters or lymph glands when his prostate was acting up, empty anarchic shit on nights like these.
“Washington’s confused,” Bondurant began, handing the cables to Becker as he peered owlishly through his reading glasses at Lowenthal, Selvey, and Reddish in turn. “They say they’re getting more from Reuters and Agence France Presse than from us. What’s happening? I take it Malunga has guns. Where did they come from?” He looked at Selvey.
“According to the Belgians and Israelis, they’re Russian guns.”
“What does that mean, that it’s a Soviet-backed coup?”
“No, sir, but right now, I’m not sure of anything.”
“What else could it mean?”
The room was silent. Becker shifted in his chair, searching the faces, trying to find the consensus.
“I take it then we’re not sure of anything.”
“No, sir,” Selvey volunteered, almost eagerly.
Bondurant asked, “Is Malunga under control?”
“It’s under control,” Reddish said.
“Can the army guarantee the safety of the embassy?”
“If Malunga goes up in smoke, so will the rest of the city,” Selvey said. “The army will pull back to protect GHQ and the présidence—”
“That’s a worse-case scenario,” Lowenthal intruded, leaning forward, his notes on his knee. “The paras seem to be doing quite well at present. The hospitals are evidently full of jeunesse wounded, no military. And the commercial section appears to be free of disorders—”
Bondurant waited impatiently, listening to Lowenthal do what he did best, supply a clever rhetorical context in which unpleasant facts could be embedded and neutralized, like wasps in amber. He grew restless.
“—in addition we’ve heard that some rebels have escaped by pirogue to Brazza. That’s a positive sign too. We’ve heard a few Cubans might be in Malunga. If so, they certainly must be in disarray by now.”
“What Cubans?” Reddish asked.
“We’ve had reports. The Belgians for one.”
There were three hundred Cubans in Brazzaville, some training the youth cadres, others the local militia, the Défense Civile. When the President had appealed to the ambassador for the M-16 rifles which State had denied, the Cuban threat was the one he’d cited. An ex-trade unionist with prewar ties to the Belgian socialists, he was convinced that his old colleagues would stop at nothing to destroy moderate Third World heretics like him. A few diplomats, like Lowenthal, shared his fears. Reddish had a different view.
A month later the station had handled the defection of a Cuban captain from the Défense Civile advisory staff who’d described Cuban problems across the river—the anarchy of local administration, local suspicions and hostility, but most importantly, the hostility of the Soviet mission which had insisted on restraint. Havana had supported the Russians and had ordered the Cuban support staff to confine its activities solely to cadre formation in Brazzaville.
Reddish had offered to brief the ambassador, but he’d received a peremptory note as acid as any Lowenthal had gotten back following receipt of one of his memos: “I’m sure this Cuban’s motives were eminently ingenious,” Bondurant had scrawled. “Men who betray their countries do so for a variety of reasons, all of them ingenious, but necessarily so, I’m sure, since all of them are despicabl
e.”
Bondurant felt the same disdain for Agency case officers like Reddish masquerading as diplomats, but it hadn’t been motives or his success in managing the defection that Reddish had wanted to talk about, just Soviet and Cuban policy in the region.
“You’ve been in Malunga?” Bondurant now asked Lowenthal.
“No, but Houlet at the French Embassy had some firsthand reports from a few of his sources.”
“I was in Malunga an hour ago,” Reddish said. “The paras are mopping up. In another three or four hours, it will probably be all over.”
“What about the other communes?” Becker asked.
“I don’t know about the other communes, but my guess would be Malunga’s the trouble spot.”
“So you’re encouraged?” Bondurant asked.
“The paras are mopping up,” Reddish repeated. “What I don’t know is what’s happening at the presidential compound or GHQ.”
“The radio station is still on the air,” Bondurant said. “I take that as a good omen, or am I being overly optimistic, Colonel? Radio stations are the first targets of coup attempts, aren’t they? Isn’t that what your counterinsurgency texts say? The President’s still on the air.”
“He’s still on the air, yes, sir.”
“Telling the rebels to lay down their arms.”
“Maybe with a gun at his head,” Selvey suggested.
Lowenthal leaned forward. “We suspect it may be a taped transcription. We’ve recorded the broadcasts and replayed them. The same appeal is being made over and over—identical, even down to the surface irregularities.”
“What does that mean?” Bondurant asked.
“They may have the voice, but it’s not entirely clear they have the man.”
Selvey turned to Lowenthal, annoyed. “When did you birds find this out?”
“Are you saying the President may be a prisoner?” Becker put in.
“I’m saying that the voice is transcribed,” Lowenthal replied. “Drawing no conclusions, not yet. It may be simple prudence on his part. The presidential palace is some distance from the radio transmitter. With guns in the streets—”
“I thought he had a private hookup at his office,” Becker remembered.
“Whether someone has the voice, the body, or the man, it’s a plea for civil order,” Bondurant interrupted, his patience wearing thin. “Let’s return to our problem. Reddish says Malunga is under control, but he doesn’t know about the rest of the city. Neither do the rest of you. A breakdown in order is still very much a possibility. What if the rebels grow in strength and the President asks us for additional military aid, as the rebels seem to be doing over this clandestine radio? What do we say if he asks for military help, immediate help—helicopters, armored cars, even tanks?”
“He’s got all he can use now,” Selvey answered. “What he ain’t got is command and control, the smarts to use what he’s got. What he could use is military advisers, but ain’t no one gonna go that route these days,” he concluded, falling back on his Tennessee vernacular, a kind of irony which didn’t endear him to Bondurant.
Ignoring him, Becker asked, “What if elements from across the river infiltrate during the night to reinforce the rebels? What if they link up with the workers party in Malunga and proclaim the peoples republic they’ve been talking about on this clandestine radio?”
“What clandestine radio?” Reddish said.
“We’ve had a report that a clandestine radio is operating from the workers party headquarters in Malunga,” Lowenthal explained, dropping his voice. “The French think they’ve picked up the transmissions.”
Bondurant gazed at Reddish curiously. “You doubt that?”
“I’d be skeptical. The party compound is demolished, the buildings burning.”
“This was at five o’clock,” Lowenthal added.
“The French don’t have that kind of capability,” Reddish said. “They couldn’t pinpoint a transmitter in Malunga with that kind of accuracy. Their commo people can’t even stay in their own operating frequencies.”
“Then you do doubt the report,” Bondurant said.
“Yes.”
“But we still have to contend with the probability of foreign support for the rebels, maybe from the African radicals, from Brazza, possibly even the Cubans. Whether they have a transmitter or not, they may claim themselves a provisional government, like the old rebel government at Stanleyville. The question is, Do we move now or wait until it’s too late,” Becker asked, “thereby risking Dr. Kissinger’s ire, as well as everyone else’s?”
“Move against what?” Reddish said, annoyed. “How? The only thing you’ve got out there are a lot of scattered kids with Soviet weapons. The paras will be potting off singles all night.”
“I don’t think we need hypothesize about an imaginary scenario when the real one is ambiguous enough,” Bondurant commented. “Reddish may well be right, but that remains to be seen. The fact is we seem to be blundering about in the dark without the faintest idea of where these guns came from, what the intention was, or where this bloodshed is leading us. I spoke to the présidence over two hours ago and told the President’s aide that we’d do nothing that would imply a loss of faith in this government. If we were to begin evacuating our staff, at least five other embassies would follow suit, and that, I’m convinced, would simply play into the hands of those who are responsible for that mischief out there. At the time, I had no idea that the situation was as confused as you now describe it.
“Meanwhile, here we sit. You can’t tell me whether it’s a coup, a revolution, or a street brawl. You don’t know where the guns came from or what they’re doing with them. Someone is in the streets attempting, for all we know, to bring down a regime we’ve invested years in—money, military equipment, time, prestige, political capital—and you can’t even give me a coherent assessment of the situation. Something like this takes people, it takes planning, it takes time! Yet you sit there squabbling among yourselves and tell me it has no paternity, that it just happened! Virgin birth, is that it!”
The room was silent. Bondurant had lifted himself from his chair and moved to the bar cart near the bookcase. He noisily filled his glass from the ice bucket and poured out a double whiskey.
“I assume that if the ministry of finance had pocketed some of the port improvement funds, I’d be told,” he resumed sourly, turning back across the room. “Or if the minister of defense had been surprised en flagrant delit atop the privy council table, as Major What’s-his-name told us at last month’s country team meeting, we’d all know of that too. Yet a bloodbath is taking place, people are being shot down in the streets, guns infiltrated into the communes to be used by the hungry, the sick, and the frightened, and you know nothing about it. We’ve failed, each of us, myself as well as you. It’s as simple as that.”
He sank down slowly in the chair in front of his desk, his anger gone, one hand held across his eyes, his gaze hidden. “My mind’s stuck,” he muttered.
“Sorry?” Becker leaned forward, startled, as if Bondurant had suffered a seizure.
“My mind’s stuck,” he repeated, removing his hand. His face was calm but distant. “I couldn’t remember the word for virgin birth. Dr. Merton at Lawrenceville once used it constantly to remind us of our ignorance.”
“Parthenogenesis,” Lowenthal volunteered quickly, like a nurse bringing smelling salts.
“That’s it—yes, thank you. Ignorance was virgin-born, he used to say. ‘Parthenogenetic nincompoops,’ he once called us. Intimidating too. I’ve always had difficulty remembering the word, probably for that reason. Freudian, would you say?” He sat up, as if he’d wakened in another room, looking about calmly. “Help yourself, please. Everyone get a drink. Why don’t you lead the way,” he suggested to Becker. “Then the three of you can get your heads together in the next room. I’d like to talk to Reddish alone for a few minutes.”
They sat alone in the study, Bondurant nursing his whiskey, Reddish no
t drinking at all.
“I take it that it hasn’t been a very good day for you,” Bondurant commenced sympathetically.
“Not very good, no.”
“When is Haversham coming back?”
“Next week, probably.”
“Ill-timed, wasn’t it, his vacation?”
Haversham had taken a holiday in the Kenyan bush after the African Division meeting in Nairobi.
“It usually happens that way.”
Bondurant nodded, putting his glass down. “If we know so little at present and have claimed so much in the past, I can only conclude we’re not telling all we know. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?” He studied Reddish in disapproval, massive head cocked forward, eyes peering over the reading glasses. “What are you concealing?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Reddish’s eyes were a clear gray-green under the sandy brows, but his cheeks were flushed. “Nothing at all, no sir.”
“I find that incredible,” Bondurant said in disbelief, sitting back. “I find it impossible to believe that you of all people could be so ignorant of what’s happening out there. Where are the ministers you’re said to control still, the ones whose pockets you’ve been lining all these years, the ones with the Geneva bank accounts and the Cote d’Azur real estate, the men whose loyalty you’re said to own, lock, stock, and barrel?”
“Shot. Bought off, scattered. They wiped me out.”
“Who wiped you out?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“But they’re dead. As dead as those in the streets? How much did it cost you and the Agency? How much? How many millions?”
“I’ve stayed with the Soviets since you came,” Reddish said. “Those were my instructions, my OD. I bailed out of internal politics a year ago when you took over.” He didn’t want a showdown with Bondurant. If Langley and State got wind of it, he’d be finished. Not an embassy or a station chief would touch him.
“You still had your ministers, like Yvon Kadima,” Bondurant said harshly. “You can’t deny that, never!”