"Say a little prayer," Louise said. "'Thank you, God, for a rich father-in-law.'"

(Three) Leopoldville, Democratic Republic of the Congo 18 May 1964 Three separate groups of people, each recognized by the authorities to be of sufficient importance to permit them to be on the tarmac instead of inside the terminal behind the customs barrier, were on hand when the UTA DC-8 touched down at Leopoldville's airfield from Brussels. Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Gregory Sutton of the Office of the Military Attache to the United States Embassy had a nodding acquaintance with the others, who were Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Doane-Foster of Barclays Bank Ltd. and Captain and Mrs. Jean Philippe Portet of Air Congo.

But they didn't speak other than to say good morning, and it wasn't until the plane had stopped and the stairs had been rolled up to the aircraft door that they learned they were all at the airport on the same mission. As the door opened, Mr. Kenneth Doane Foster's chauffeur unrolled a sheet of paper on which had been neatly lettered MRS. GEOFFREY CRAIG and held it over his head.

"Kenneth," Captain Portet said in the hearing of Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Sutton, "what are you doing here?"

"Meeting an American lady," Doane-Foster said.

"I think we're meeting the same one," Jean-Philippe Portet said.

"You don't say," Doane-Foster said.

"I think we all are," Lieutenant Colonel Sutton said.

"There's Louise," Mrs. Sutton said, and then raised her voice.

"Hello, Lou!" Louise Hodges spotted her and smiled, then waved.

Mrs. Sutton went to the foot of the stairs, and when Louise came down them, trailed by Ursula Craig, kissed her.

"Long time no see," she said.

"Welcome to the Congo. Pappy and Geoff got weathered in at Kolwezi."

"That figures," Louise said. "This is Geoff's wife. She's very tired and very pregnant. Is there some way you can get us through this customs crap quickly?"

"You'll be staying with us until we can find someplace for you to live," Mrs. Sutton said. "Quarters are nonexistent. As soon as we get to our place, I'll have the surgeon have a look at her." She put her hand out to Ursula. "I'm Dottie Sutton."

"How do you do?" Ursula said, looking at the sign with her name on it with confusion.

"Mrs. Craig," Kenneth Doane-Foster said, "I am Kenneth Doane-Foster of Barclays Bank, and this is my wife, Daphne."

"How do you do?" Mrs. Doane-Foster said, extending her hand to Ursula.

"Ursula," Hanni Portet said, "ich bin Jacks Stiefmutter. Und hier is! sein Vater."

"I say, we do have a situation here, don't we?" Doane-Foster said. "I couldn't help but overhear something about a problem about quarters and a doctor. Let me quickly offer the ladies the Barclays guest house for as long as they need it. And I can have our doctor there by the time we get there."

"I don't need a doctor," Ursula said, "I feel fine." She looked at Hanni with what Hanni thought was a plea for help in her eyes.

"I claim stepmother's rights," Hanni said firmly, switching to English. "These two have been feeding Jack, and I intend to make it up to them." She turned to Ursula and switched back to German.

"You hungry? Or would you rather go right out to our house?"

"I'm hungry," Ursula said. "When's Geoff going to be here?"

"Maybe tomorrow, the day after for sure. By then we'll have you rested up and pretty."

"Danke schon," Ursula said.

"I say, I'm sorry, I don't speak German," Doane-Foster said. "I missed most of that."

"My wife, Ken, just stole the prize," Jean-Philippe Portet said.

The issue of who stayed where was finally settled over lunch at the Cercle Sportif, Leopoldville's country club. Louise Hodges would stay with her old friends the Suttons. Ursula Craig would stay with the Portets. Kenneth Doane-Foster signed the tab; Mrs. Doane-Foster said that the moment they had their feet on the ground she would have a lunch to introduce them to the other ladies of the community; her husband said that was a splendid idea, and the moment he got to the office, he would get on the phone-he knew some people-and see if he couldn't come up with an apartment. And he would of course have his physician drop by the Portets' that afternoon.

When Doane-Foster got back to his office, he went to the file and got out the confidential file on Air Simba, to which the bank had lent a rather substantial amount of money in a transaction it regarded as rather risky. He made a note that Jean-Philippe Portet had a previously unknown very close personal relationship through his son with Geoffrey Craig, the only child of Porter Craig, Chairman of the Board of Craig, Powell, Kenyon & Dawes, the investment bankers. He dictated a confidential memorandum to that effect for telex transmission to London and then called in his real estate man and told him he needed an apartment suitable for a young junior officer just assigned to the U. S. Embassy.

"His name is Geoffrey Craig," Doane-Foster said. "His father is Porter Craig, of Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes. Sir Edward called me, Tom. He said he thought it might be a good idea if I did what I could for him in behalf of the bank. And I rather got the idea he had more in mind than my picking up the odd luncheon chit. Do you take my point?"

(Four) The Hotel du Lac Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo 18 May 1964 Major Pappy Hodges and First Lieutenant Geoffrey Craig had been in their room not more than fifteen minutes, just long enough to strip out of their flight suits and take a shower, when there was a knock at the door.

Pappy went to the door wrapped in a towel. An African stood there, a large man wearing a white cotton jacket, a round red felt cap, baggy black trousers, and sandals.

"What can I do for you?" Pappy asked suspiciously.

"M'sieu would like to buy jade?"

"No."

"Well, then, how about a thirteen-year-old virgin? We're running a special on slightly damaged thirteen-year-old virgins."

"Father!" Geoff cried. Rushing naked and dripping to the door, he wrapped his arms around the African and pulled him into the room. "Jesus Christ, how the hell are you?"

"Parched," the African said, closing the door and turning to offer his hand to Pappy. "Captain Lunsford, Sir."

"I'll be damned," Pappy said.

"Won't we all?" Father Lunsford said. "Have you guys got anything to drink?"

"There's a bottle of Scotch in my bag."

"They have room service," Lunsford said. "Get us some beer."

"I didn't expect to see you here," Geoff said as he picked up the telephone and ordered a half-dozen bottles of beer.

"Tell them Simba," Father Lunsford said. "They have two kinds of beer here, Simba and elephant piss."

"Simba," Geoff said to the telephone.

"And I would dearly like a cigar. I don't suppose either of you?"

Pappy went to his Jepp case and came out with a box of cigars.

"Genuine Havanas," he said. "I bought them in Greenland. They're terrible. The communists seem to have fucked that up, to."

"Expatriate life does tend to make one a terrible chauvinist, doesn't it?" Lunsford said in a mock English accent as he bit the end from his cigar.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Geoff asked.

"Reconnoitering," Lunsford said. "I had a guy at the airport and he said that an L-23 had landed. I figured it was probably you, and since I was in the neighborhood. . ."

"We had a hell of a time getting across the border," Pappy said.

"Well, Major, you're clearly a pair of mercenaries," Lunsford said, "bent on bringing back colonialism." He exhaled and looked at the cigar. "Kicking the gift horse in the teeth, that is pretty disappointing, isn't it?"

"And they were six bits apiece," Pappy said.

There was a knock at the door. Lunsford went quickly into the bathroom and stayed there until the waiter with the beer had gone.

"Reconnoitering?" Geoff asked as he handed him a bottle of beer.

"Roads and drop zones," Lunsford said. "And then I was over in Bujumbura having a look at the Chinese. Jesus, I hope we don't get involved in anything here. This is the tail end of a very long supply line."

"You think we will, Father?" Geoff asked.

"I don't know for sure, but if I were Mao Tse-tung and wanted to fuck things up over here, I'd sure know how to go about it."

"How?" Geoff asked.

"I would ship in a couple of crates of AK-47s as embassy furniture and then pass them out to the most convenient savage who sees himself as the leader of his country," Lunsford said.

"He would take it from there."

"'Savage'?" Geoff quoted softly.

"Savage," Lunsford said. "There are some exceptions they've got a first-rate colonel named Leonard Mulamba, who knows what he's doing. . ."

"I never heard that name," Pappy said thoughtfully.

"He stays the hell out of Leopoldville," Lunsford said. "Dills arranged for me to meet him. I guess you've met Colonel Dills? The Strike Command guy?"

"We're getting our orders from him," Pappy said, and added, "Some of them."

"Good man," Lunsford said. "Anyway, I got to meet Mulamba, and we hit it off, and I asked him how he would recommend I get around. So he put me in an ANC uniform"-the Armee Nationale Congolaise-"as a major, Major. And we went around together. He could teach some of my instructors at Leavenworth how to conduct an IG inspection. No bullshit.

Right to the heart of what they, call combat readiness. Or the lack of it-which is about all we found.

"You went to Leavenworth?" Geoff asked. The U.S. Army Command and General Staff College is at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

"'Went?'" Lunsford asked. "My good fellow, I was the honor graduate of my class. And I have a suitably engraved sword to prove it."

"I'm awed," Geoff said.

"You damned well should be," Father Lunsford said. "You're looking at a certified future senior leader of our armed forces." He held out his hand for another bottle of beer.

"If I'd known what I was getting into over here," Lunsford went on, "I'd have taken my sword off the mantelpiece and brought it with me. The savages are impressed with swords. They have some trouble grasping things like automatic weapons."

"So did I when I was drafted," Geoff said.

"You are not listening to me," Lunsford said. "I'm talking savages."

"For example?"

"Well, for example, I got this from Colonel Mulamba during the Katangese rebellion. The rebel forces entered battle against the mercenaries with great confidence. They had dawa."

"What's that?" Pappy asked. "Well, the officers take a recruit and they make little cuts on his forehead and chest. Then they rub magic dust in the wounds."

"Magic dust?" Geoff asked, chuckling.

"Shut up and let me finish. Then they drape an animal skin, lion-simba-is best, of course, but goat will do in a pinch. Then they tell the recruit to walk away. They pop a couple of rounds in the air and tell the recruit the ceremony marked, he now has dawa. He is now immune to bullets. And he believes it, because he has heard the shots himself and is still alive."

"That's hard to believe," Geoff said.

"You better believe it, Geoff," Lunsford told him seriously, "or you'll wind up in little pieces, a l'italienne."

"What does that mean?" Geoff asked. "'Like the Italians'?"

"You're an aviator," Lunsford said incredulously, "and you never heard about the Eye-talian aviators?" Geoff and Pappy shook their heads no.

"The Italian Air Force sent people down here. . . to Kamina, an ex-Belgian air base-"

"We've been there," Pappy said.

"-to teach the Congolese how to fly," Lunsford picked up.

"And half a dozen of them did not pay some hookers the agreed upon price. They disappeared. The Eye-talians, I mean. They turned up in the market. Neatly sliced into roasts and chops."

"Really?" Geoff asked incredulously.

"Really. A lot of these people came out of the trees last week, my innocent young friend. To coin a phrase, this is a whole new ball game. I won't say the rules are different, because there are no rules. If we get into something over here, it's going to be a mess."

"You think the Chinese are going to start something, Lunsford?" Pappy asked.

"I don't know. Felter obviously does, and from what I hear of that guy, he's usually right."

"Felter told us you were training Congolese paratroopers," Pappy said.

"And so we are," Lunsford said. "It goes a little slow. You have to start with the basics. 'This is a boot. You put the boot on your foot.'"

"Three A-Teams?" Geoff asked. "That's all?"

"You don't think that's enough?" Father Lunsford asked. "Oh, ye of little faith! We are here to save the world for, democracy, and the Green Berets shall not fail or my name is not Maxwell Goldberg. Fuck it-let's eat! The steaks here are not at all bad, and you guys are buying."

"I thought you didn't want to be seen with us," Geoff said.

"I will now leave," Captain Lunsford said, "and go downstairs. And then, when you come in the dining room, I will come to your table and offer to sell you jade, and this time, Major, you will try to cheat this poor and ignorant savage out of it."