"She and your sister and my daughter are on the Cap d' Antiles," Jean-Philippe said.

"And will you take us back?" Karl-Heinz asked.

"Probably," Jean-Philippe said. "And I will be discreet. Geoff has explained the situation to me."

Karl-Heinz thought that over a moment.

"I suppose, under the circumstances, that he had to tell you," he said finally. "I want to get in touch with Colonel Dills. I thought the safest way to do that would be through Geoff."

"We'll call when we get to the house," Jean-Philippe said.

"He's in the U.S. Embassy compound. It's not far."

"What do you want with Dills?" Geoff asked.

"We met with Tshombe this afternoon," Karl-Heinz said.

"And?"

"I do not think I should get into that with you," Karl-Heinz said.

"Tshombe's not going to use Major Hoare and his people unless he has to," Jean-Philippe said conversationally. "Using them will cause him a good deal of trouble, inside and out of the Congo. The use of white mercenaries is the one thing a black African politician simply cannot do. He hopes that he will be able to put General Olenga's Simba Army down using the Armee Nationale Congolaise. I don't think he will be able to, even using B-26s against them. More importantly, neither do colonels Joseph-Desire Mobutu and Leonard Mulamba, probably the only Congolese officers who know what they're talking about. They have been pressing him to get Hoare into action as soon as possible. As of last week. Since Tshombe is unwilling to commit political suicide right now, a compromise has been reached. Belgium will be asked to provide a couple hundred officers to 'advise' the ANC. Put some backbone into it, so to speak."

"You sound as if you have been talking to him," Geoff said.

"Him and Mobutu," Jean-Philippe said. "Let me finish: And a quantity of arms and ammunition, plus a good deal of money, will be made available to Michael Hoare just inside the South African border. He is to recruit, to prepare, and to arm his mercenaries, and be ready to send them should they be needed.

Tshombe does not think the rebels will even try to take Stanleyville. Mobutu thinks they can and will."

"You seem to be privy to a great deal, Captain Portet," Karl-Heinz Wagner said.

"Everything I have just said is known to Colonel Dills," Jean Philippe Portet said. "But I think he would be very interested in your assessment of Hoare's potential. So I will, as I said, ask him to come by the house."

"So far as Olenga's-the Simbas-potential is concerned," Geoff said, "I saw Father Lunsford the day before yesterday. He said they have not as yet received any substantial arms shipments from Bujumbura or anywhere else."

"He's with them?" Karl-Heinz asked.

"I don't know if he's with the Simbas or just watching them from the bush," Geoff said. "He's dressed up like one of them. But he did tell me that most of the Simbas are from thirteen to fifteen years old; they get their strategy from witch doctors; and-I thought this very interesting-after they beat to death anybody who can read or who used to work for the government -or behead them-they cut out their livers and broil them."

"You don't mean eat them?" Karl-Heinz asked incredulously.

"That's what Father Lunsford said."

"I heard that. But I thought it was bullshit."

"If you get it from Father Lunsford, you can believe it," Geoff said.

XII.

(One) Leopoldville, Democratic Republic of the Congo 22 May 1964 Hannelore Portet could think of a number of reasons why Ursula and Geoff should not move into the apartment Kenneth Doane-Foster found for them in a seven-story building downtown near the Mobil Oil Building.

For one thing it wasn't that nice an apartment. The nicest thing that could be said about it was that it was available. The rooms were small and dark, and the balcony faced the sun, which meant that it would be unusable except very early in the morning and at night. And it was downtown, which meant that no matter how hard the concierge tried to keep them out, there would be a steady stream of salesmen knocking at Ursula's door. And she didn't like the idea of Ursula being there alone when Geoff was out of town. And then there was the problem of servants.

On the other hand, the Portet house could swallow Geoff and Ursula-and the baby when it came-without a hiccup. The house was just too big for the three people who lived there. Jean Philippe even admitted that. But he refused to sell it because of the tennis court and the swimming pool. A pool and a tennis court would just not fit in, in a neighborhood of houses small enough for the three of them, he argued. And besides, he used the house to entertain for business purposes, and the Congolese would wonder what trouble he, or Air Simba, was having if they sold the place and moved into smaller quarters.

He was right, of course, but she considered that the pool and the tennis courts and an excess of houseboys were just another reason why it made sense for Geoff and Ursula to just stay.

And there were personal reasons, too. Jeanine was eleven, about to cross over into womanhood, and Hanni thought Jeanine could learn more from Ursula about love and babies than she ever could from maternal lectures. Jeanine and Ursula had hit it off from the beginning, and Hanni was always pleased when she came across them speaking German.

And Geoff and Jean-Philippe had hit it off from the very beginning. It was not hard to understand why Geoff and Jack had become friends, and with Jack gone, Geoff seemed to be standing in for him.

Hanni had sensed from the very beginning, from the day Jean-Philippe had met Geoff at the airport and brought him to the Cercle Sportif for dinner, that Geoff was somehow uncomfortable with them. She had no idea why-for he obviously liked them but she was sure of her feeling.

The opportunity to bring up the subject came when Hanni walked out of the living room and found Geoff and Jean-Philippe sitting beneath an umbrella on the upper patio. They were drinking beer in what Hanni thought of as American style. They had their feet up on chairs, and their beer bottles rested in ice-filled champagne coolers, one per drinker, and they were drinking it from the necks of the bottles. They took a swallow and then buried the bottles in the ice.

Jeanine, Ursula, and two of the dogs were in the swimming pool. Ursula was in up to her neck, for two reasons. The water seemed to take away some of the strain. . . and for modesty. She was much too large for a bathing suit, so she wore a slip over her underwear.

Hanni walked over to the men and took her husband's bottle from him, carefully wiped the neck on her dress, and took a pull.

"She does that, you understand," Jean-Philippe said, obviously pleased to have the opportunity to explain, "to give the impression there is no intimate contact between us." Hanni poured a little beer in her husband's lap, and when he stood up, smiled and handed him the beer bottle.

"There should be a special medal for men married to Gemlan women," he said.

"I have a proposition to make," she said.

"I'm all ears. Any lewd proposals will be carefully considered. "

"I was talking to Geoff," Hanni said. "The proposition is that since the dogs won't have nearly so much fun if he moves Ursula out of here, that they should stay, permanently."

"I second the motion," Jean-Philippe said immediately. "If Ursula wasn't in there with Jeanine, the damned dogs would be standing here shaking themselves dry." They both looked at Geoff and were both surprised at the look of discomfort on his face.

"What did I say wrong?" Hanni asked.

"Jack told me to stay away from you," Geoff said. "He said there would be resentment."

"That's ridiculous," Hanni said. "Who would be resentful?

Was he talking about the embassy?"

"The Congolese. He... uh . . . said it might involve some pretty unpleasant stuff."

"Nonsense," Hanni said immediately.

"Does Jack know something I don't?" Jean-Philippe asked.

"Are you in the CIA?"

"No," Geoff said.

"Then there's nothing to worry about."

"But I'm not just flying airplanes for the embassy, either," Geoff said.

"No one thinks that any assistant military attache in anybody's embassy is around just to watch parades," Jean-Philippe said.

"Jack's concern is touching but misplaced."

"He was worried, and I mean worried, about physical violence," Geoff said. "He talked about you getting your airplanes blown up . .. and worse."

"As long as the present government is in power, we're in no danger of any kind," Jean-Philippe said. "And so far as you're concerned, you and Ursula, you're probably safer here than you would be in New York City."

"How do you figure that?"

"Kenneth Doane-Foster, which is to say Barclays Bank, met Ursula at the airport. Mobutu's Service de Securite didn't miss that, and by now they've found out what that was all about. Mobutu knows that his government is going to have to borrow enormous amounts of money, and I don't think he wants to ruin his welcome on Wall Street, or on Threadneedle Street, which he would if anything at all, from a traffic ticket up, happened to you or Ursula."

"I think you overestimate my father's influence," Geoff said.

"I never heard of your father," Jean-Philippe said. "But Doane-Foster has, and when I asked him what he was doing at the airport, he was honest enough to tell me. Is it really true that your father owns Manhattan Island south of Washington Square?" Geoff took a moment to reply. Then he met Jean-Philippe's eyes.

"No," he said. "That's a gross exaggeration."

"Well, let's not disillusion either Doane-Foster or Colonel Mobutu," Jean-Philippe said. "For your sake and mine."

"Excuse me?"

"Doane-Foster has been much nicer to me since you came to stay with us," Jean-Philippe said. "You're the social catch of the 1964 Leopoldville Social Season."

"Jesus!" Geoff said.

"And I have been led to believe by Mobutu's brother-in-law, who's got a piece of Air Simba, that the Colonel would be pleased to be invited to dinner. . . to meet the man whose father owns Manhattan Island south of Washington Square."

"You didn't tell me that," Hanni said.

"I didn't think Ursula would be up to a dinner," Jean-Philippe said.

"No, of course not," Hanni said quickly.

"Why don't we ask her?" Geoff said. "If we're going to be living here, we should meet the neighbors." He met Jean Philippe's eyes again. "I didn't like the idea of her being alone in the apartment with me gone all the time. But I didn't know what the hell to do about it. I'm very grateful."

(Two) Albertville, Democratic Republic of the Congo 14 June 1964 Martin Luther Nsagamdo was short, slight, and twenty-eight years old, but looked older. He had had rickets as a result of malnutrition as a child, and by the time he had been taken in by the Lutheran Mission of St. John (Missouri Synod), the damage was beyond repair.

The Lutherans had taught him English, and how to read and write, and that God had sent his own son, Jesus Christ, to save sinners, black and white.

Martin Luther Nsagamdo had been an unusually bright child, and there had been talk of sending him to the United States on a scholarship, but in the end there had been no money. He finished the missionary school, which went through the equivalent of eighth grade, and then he was sent to Kolwezi, to the Belgian Catholics, who ran a high school, St. Agnes's, for bright youngsters.

That hadn't worked out either. He lasted two years, just long enough to more or less master French and to operate a typewriter.

But he had great difficulty with mathematics; and Father Henri had gently explained to him that perhaps God had other plans for him than becoming a clerk. And that it was now time for him to leave school, as space had to be made for others.

Martin was then, so far as he knew, about fourteen. He returned to Albertville and tried to find work in the mines, but they would not have him because he didn't look strong enough. So he found work in the kitchen of a Belgian mining engineer. He did the kitchen laundry, shined the pots and pans and stoves, and saw that the Belgian's dog got what the Belgian wanted him to have and that the food just didn't disappear from the kitchen.

And he learned how to cook. Not fancy-that involved secrets the Belgian's cook was not foolish enough to share with him-but simple. He could fry eggs, broil ham and chicken, and make roasts of pork and beef. He stayed with the Belgian and his family eight years, then worked for another Belgian for two.

Then he went to work for K. N. Swayer, the chef Americain who had come to Albertville to put trucks together. Because he was loud and took the Lord Jesus' name in vain very frequently and sometimes drank himself into oblivion, K. N. Swayer at first frightened Martin Luther Nsagamdo. But he came to understand that he was really a good man, that the Americans who put the huge trucks together were different from the Americans of the Lutheran Mission of St. John (Missouri Synod) and from the Belgians. Not worse, just different.

Martin Luther's cooking pleased K. N. Swayer. He liked steak and potatoes and a tomato, or roast pork and potatoes and a tomato, and for a sweet ate ice cream flown in from Leopoldville, over which he sometimes poured chocolate syrup and sometimes Benedictine.

And he taught Martin Luther Nsagamdo to drive his car, and he put him in charge of keeping it spotless. K. N. Swayer repaired the car himself, and Martin Luther watched him, and thus came to understand something of how it worked.

On one memorable occasion, K. N. Swayer told him to get behind the wheel of the car and then ordered him to drive to his village so that he could see what it looked like.

It was a grand and glorious feeling to drive into the village at the wheel of a red MGB. On the way home, K. N. Swayer asked him why he had never married, and Martin Luther Nsagamdo explained that a wife cost so many head of cattle, and he had not yet been able to save up quite that much money.

The next day K. N. Swayer told him that he had been thinking it over, and that he really thought Martin Luther would be a much better boy if he had a wife to help him around the house. And exactly how much more money did he need than he had?

Martin Luther Nsagamdo concluded that K. N. Swayer was really a Christian gentleman after K. N. Swayer told him he could consider the money he had lent him to be a wedding present, and came to the wedding and sang in a loud voice "Jesus Loves Me" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers" from memory.

Martin Luther Nsagamdo was happier as K. N. Swayer's number-one boy than he had ever been in his life, and he was very sad to realize that this part of his life was coming to an end.

He found K. N. Swayer sitting on the back porch of the house, watching darkness fall on Lake Tanganyika. He was drinking beer from a bottle and munching on cheese and crackers.

"May I speak with you, Sir?"

"Now what did you break, for Christ's sake?"

"Evil is coming," Martin Luther Nsagamdo said.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The Simbas are here," Martin Luther Nsagamdo said.

"The lions?" Swayer asked, confused.

"They call themselves the lions," Martin Luther Nsagamdo said.

"Who the hell are they?"

"Evil men," he said, "who have gathered around Nicholas Olenga. He used to be a clerk for the railroad."

"Why is he evil?" Swayer asked. His curiosity was now aroused.

"He says he will kill all white men," Nsagamdo said. "Especially Americans."

"Why?"

"Because you are here in the Congo to make slaves of everybody."

"And you say this character is here. You mean in Albertville?"