"We're going to go to Kamina," Geoff said. "And then to Punia. There's four H-34s at Kamina plus a couple more supposed to be en route. We can stage them at Punia. Then we jump in the Berets near Stanleyville at night. They take the consulate and hold it long enough - thirty minutes ought to do it-for the H-34s to land and make the evacuation."

"And what do you think the Simbas will be doing while you're doing this?" Jean-Philippe asked.

"If we can we're going to pick up Father Lunsford and ask him," Geoff said. "It's feasible. Twenty guys who know what they're doing can accomplish amazing things."

Wishful thinking, Jean-Philippe thought. But saying so will accomplish nothing.

He looked at his watch.

"The sooner I get airborne," he said, "the sooner Michael Hoare will have his money."

(Six) Washington, D.C. 5 August 1964 FLASH FLASH.

APWASH 8133 WASHINGTON-THE WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCED At 2:13 PM THIS AFTERNOON THAT US NAVY AIRCRAFT OPERATING FROM A NAVAL TASKFORCE IN THE GULF OF TONKIN HAVE BOMBED NAVAL INSTALLATIONS IN NORTH VIETNAM.

PRESIDENT LYNDON B., JOHNSON ORDERED THE 'SURGWAL' STRIKE" IN RETALIATION FOR THE NORTH VIETNAMESE TORPEDO BOAT ATTACK ON THE US NAVY DESTROYERS MADOOK, AND TURNER JOY IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS IN THE GULF OF TONKIN.

SEVERE DAMAGE WAS REPORTED TO DOCKS AND FUEL STORAGE FACILITIES IN PORTS FROM WHICH NORTH VIETNAM IS KNOWN TO OPERATE TORPEDO BOATS. ALL AIRCRAFT INVOLVED IN THE ATTACK RETURNED SAFELY FROM THE MISSION.

(Seven) The Immoquateur Apartments Stanleyville, Democratic Republic of the Congo 6 August 1964 Once the Simbas had left the Consulate Building, Warrant Officer Joe Manley had volunteered to go into town and have a look around.

The polite fiction was that he was to establish contact with the Armee National~ Congolaise and learn from them their plans to either recapture the city or make an attempt to rescue the consulate and other American personnel.

As he made his way through the backyards of the comfortable houses lining the Avenue Eisenhower, the only members of the ANC he saw were dead, their corpses lying where they had fallen. Many of them were mutilated. They had been slashed, he judged, by machetes.

Since he had been in the vault when. the consulate was invaded, and the door was of course closed, he had yet to get a look at any member of General Olenga's Army of Liberation, the Simbas. Now the Simbas, the first ones he had ever seen, were allover, and they were worse than he expected.

Some of them wore uniforms. This suggested at least that they were officers. Some looked like incredibly slovenly troops. And some looked, Manley thought, like extras in a old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie. They were bare chested and barefoot, their faces were marked with mud, and they had animal skins draped -over their shoulders.

It was difficult to accept that this rabble had defeated armed, organized troops, but that seemed to be the simple truth.

And then some Simbas saw him.

They set out, from Avenue Eisenhower, after him. Not quite sure where he was going, he ran up and down alleys expecting any moment to hear a burst of automatic weapons fire. But none came, and finally when he looked over his shoulder to see if his, pursuers were gaining on him, there was no one in sight.

He ran a little farther until he could run no more, and then stepped inside what had only the day before been a stationery store. The shelves had been ripped from the walls toward the center of the room, and their contents were scattered everywhere.

Manley climbed to the center of the room over the rubble and found a sort of cave, where the high shelves from one wall had fallen onto a desk. He would stay there out of sight until dark, he decided.

By the time he got his breath back, there had been time to reach an unnerving conclusion. The Simbas who had been after him had given up the chase not because he had gotten away from them, but because further pursuit on their part would have been a waste of effort. He was a white man in a city surrounded by hundreds of miles of jungle. There was no way he could get out of town, and even if he could do that, no way to get through the jungle.

It finally grew dark, and then to his great surprise, the street lights came on. When he finally gathered his courage enough to look very carefully out the door, he saw lights in homes and offices, and then, incredibly, Europeans walking along the streets. Quickly and nervously to be sure, obviously anxious to get where they were going as quickly as, possible, but still on the streets.

He thought that over for a couple of minutes.

Lieutenant Craig, the young Army aviator who had flown the unmarked L-19 into Punia, had told him when he returned that he had heard from an absolutely reliable source that the Simbas actually practiced cannibalism. Young Craig obviously believed that, whether or not it were true.

Manley resolved, very calmly, that if it were true, and these fucking people did decide to hack him up with a machete prior to broiling his liver, he would do a John Wayne. He would take as many of them with him as he could.

And the way to do that was to get to his apartment in the Imoquateur. There, in a carefully hollowed out book, The Indian Campaigns of General Philip Sheridan ("borrowed" from the library at Vint Hill Farms Station, Virginia, where he bad undergone the last stage of cryptographic training), was a Colt 1911Al automatic pistol and two spare magazines. He had taken the pistol from the body of a Marine lieutenant when X U.S. Corps had retreated from the Yalu in December of -50. It was in the hollowed-out book because, among other chickenshit regulations that went with this assignment, there had been a regulation that absolutely forbade personally owned firearms.

He got as far as the elevator in the Immoquateur without being seen, and there he found himself looking down the open end of an FN 7mm barrel.

"Que voulez-vous?" the Simba asked.

Shit, that bastard doesn't speak French any better than I do.

"lei, mon maison," Manley said.

"Maison?"

"Qui, mon maison," Manley said imperiously.

"Bon," the Simba said, - smiling and lowering the Fabrique Nationale. "Bonsoir, M'sieu."

"Bonne soir yourself, you cocksucker." Manley got on the elevator and rode to the fourth floor. Someone had been in the apartment. His Zenith Transoceanic portable radio was gone, he saw immediately.

But nobody had bothered his books. He went and took The Indian Campaigns of General Philip Sheridan from the bookcase, opened it, and shook the Colt loose.

He removed the magazine, saw that it was full, replaced it, and worked the action. Then he took the two spare magazines and put them in his trousers pockets. Then he sat there in the dark, holding the pistol.

The telephone rang.

He. looked at it in disbelief. A telephone, with cannibals. running the town?

But then he remembered the power plant was obviously still in operation, so why not the telephone?

He picked it up.

"Manley." It was the Consul General. He had been "concerned" about him and thought he would "give the apartment a try."

"Did you plan to come back here tonight?"

"Not unless you want me to," Manley said.

"No need," the Consul General said. "If you think you could, why don't you check out the building and see if you can find out how many Americans are there."

"Yes, Sir," Manley said.

"I'll see you in the morning then," the Consul General said and hung up.

He did not, Manley thought, even ask if he had found the ANC, and if so, what the ANC had had to say.

(Eight) Johannesburg, South Africa 7 August 1964 "Embassy of the United States of America, good morning."

"Mr. Edward T. Watson, please," the caller Said. He had a slight German accent.

"Just one moment, Sir."

"Hello !"

"Mr. Edward T. Watson, please."

"I'm sorry, he's not here at the moment. May I take a message? Or have him return your call?"

"Would you please tell him that I wish he were here, the wild geese are flying?"

"You must be Ed's Cousin Karl."

"That's right."

"Well, I'll get that message to him within a few minutes."

"You're very kind."

"Karl?"

"Yes?"

"Good luck, Karl. Take care of yourself."

"Thank you." That afternoon the following advertisement appeared in the Johannesburg, South Africa, Times of South Africa: "Any fit Young man looking for employment with a difference at a salary well in excess of 100 Pounds monthly should telephone Johannesburg 2323 during business hours. Employment is initially offered for six months. Immediate start." The next day the same advertisement, differing only in the telephone number to be called in Salisbury, Rhodesia, appeared in the Salisbury Morning News and Bulletin.

XVIII.

(One) The Immoquateur Apartments Stanleyville, Democratic Republic of the Congo 5 August 1964 There was a three-quarter moon reflecting off the sheet-steel roofs of the warehouse on the other side of the Congo River. The surface of the river itself was so smooth that there was a remarkably clear reflection of the moon on it. Hannelore Portet, leaning on the concrete railing of the balcony of the Air Simba apartment, could smell hibiscus.

A few minutes earlier she had heard the washing machine start up, which meant Ursula was washing the day's diapers, and she was not surprised when Ursula came out onto the balcony a minute or so later.

"I guess his Royal Highness has given his slaves the rest of the night off?" Hanni said, speaking German.

Ursula made a grunting noise that could have been a chuckle.

"Mary Magdalene is rocking him to sleep," she said. "Jeanine is asleep. She fell asleep reading Playboy."

"When I was her age, my parents had a doctor book," Hanni said. "We used to sneak it out and look at the pictures." Ursula made the grunting noise again.

"What's going to happen to us, Hanni?" Ursula asked.

"I wondered when you were going to get around to asking," Hanni said. "About the only answer I can give you is that we wait."

"That's not much of an answer."

"I both like and love you," Hanni said. "I love you because you're sweet and a good mother, and you're good for Jeanine.

"And I like you because you're tough. I don't think many people, including Geoff, know how tough you are."

"I'm not tough," Ursula said. "I'm scared to death."

"But you're competent. You get done what needs to be done. And you're not hysterical. You haven't started crying."

"I have," Ursula said. "I woke up in the middle of the night and cried. I want to go home!"

"You haven't let Jeanine see you," Hanni said. "Or Mary Magdalene."

"What good would that do?"

"I'm scared too," Hanni said. "And I know that us being here is my fault."

"Don't be silly."

"Sil1y silly? If I hadn't played the grande dame, been Madame Chef Pilote, we would have been aboard that airplane when it took off."

"That's ridiculous," Ursula said.

"But I was, and here I am with my daughter; and you, and are surrounded by les sauvages on a rampage."

"I don't want to hear any more of that," Ursula said. "I want you to tell me what's going to happen. And I'd rather you hadn't mentioned Les savages,' thank you just the same."

"But that's what they are," Hanni said. "I'm a mother. I understand them." "You're a mother?" Ursula said, incredulously. "You understand. them?"

"I've raised a child," Hanni said. "And as you are about to find out."

"I've seen signs already. Children are savages. They have to be taught how to behave. No one has ever taught les sauvages to behave."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," Hanni said. "It was sinful what the Belgians did in granting independence overnight. It was like giving a gun and the keys to a car to a six-year-old. Something like this was bound to happen. And you can no more blame the savage who came out of the bush and who think they're freeing the country from colonialism than you can blame a small child for cutting himself after you gave him a knife. They just don't know any better."

"They know how to use their knives," Ursula said.

Hanni didn't reply for a moment. "I don't know what's going," she said finally. "I don't have any idea. You never know what's going to happen in the Congo."

"They are killing people every day," Ursula said. "Beating them to death. Cutting them up with big knives . . . what do you call them? 'Machetes.'"

"So. far no. Europeans," Hanni said.

"So. far," Ursula said. "But how long will that last?"

"I have been thinking positive," Hanni said. "Did you ever read that book?"

"What?"

"A book. Written by an American. The Power of Positive Thinking."

"No., I haven't," Ursula said, a tone of impatience, even annoyance, in her voice.

"The idea in it is that you think of the best that you can do.