"I can smell it on you right now," Carol Weston said without backing down. "You've had a lot to drink today already, and it's barely six o'clock." Carol Weston was Henry Bowman's closest female friend from high school. They had been in dramatics class together, and Henry had thought her high school boyfriend was a jerk. Now Carol had a new college beau she had met at her school in Florida. From what she had told him about the fellow, Henry thought he sounded okay.

Henry turned sideways in the seat of his mother's Buick station wagon and took another bite out of his hamburger. He was trying to appear relaxed instead of upset. "For God's sake Carol, I didn't even drink beer in high school. Now I come back home from my sophomore year in college during Christmas break, there's parties just about every night, I have a few drinks like everybody else, and now, sitting here in the parking lot at Steak n Shake, you say I'm an alcoholic? Where the hell does that come from?"

"You've changed, Henry. I might not have noticed, or I might have thought it was because all of us are off in college now and we're all a little different from the way we were in high school. Except my mother became an alcoholic after Daddy left, and when I see you now, I see a difference, and it's exactly the same thing I saw with her."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this!" Henry said in amazement. "Have I been mean to you, or anyone else? Have you seen me yelling, or staggering around, or have my hands been shaking, or..." Henry tried to think of other things that alcoholics did. "...or anything like that?" he said finally.

"You were almost half an hour late to Kelly's house Monday night."

"Late? How can you be half an hour late to a party? That's ridiculous!"

"Henry, every party you ever went to when we were in school together, you showed up exactly at the time

on the invitation. All of us girls used to laugh about it. One time I was helping with Irene Cohen's party and you showed up at her house at six minutes after seven. I told her that her clock was probably six minutes fast, and when she called time and temperature, it was."

"So since I used to show up at parties exactly on time, and now I arrive twenty minutes late, that means I'm an alcoholic." Henry was smiling, and Carol Weston wanted to join him, but she held her ground. "When did you start drinking today?" she demanded.

"I haven't been drinking today," he lied. "If you smell liquor on me, it's what I had at my aunt's house last night, sweating out of me." Carol Weston nodded in acceptance.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. Is there any in the car right now? I could use a little something, even if you're not going to have one."

"No, I'm afraid there isn't," Henry lied again. What made her guess I'd have a bottle under the back seat? he wondered.

"Okay. No big deal." She picked up some more french fries and put them in her mouth. "You been flying your plane much?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Every week," he answered. Actually more like every other week, lately. "Flew it home," Henry added with a shrug. "That's ten hours, almost."

Carol Weston began to get an idea. "You still do those stunts?" she asked. Henry had taken Carol flying the previous summer, and had shown her a loop, a snap roll, and finally a five-turn spin. She had been both terrified and exhilarated, particularly by the last maneuver.

"Sure."

"Take me right now," she said suddenly. "Take me up in your plane and do that thing where everything whirls around and I thought I was going to die."

"It's called a 'spin'," Henry corrected. He shook his head. "Carol, it's dark out. I don't do aerobatics at night. It's not safe-you can get disoriented too easily. That's a good way to get killed."

Carol Weston snorted. "You told me when we did it that day last summer that all you had to do was push the rudder the other way and let go of everything, and the plane would start flying okay by itself. Isn't that what you said?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"Then let's go. You said you'd take me anywhere I wanted to go tonight so long as we didn't have to get dressed up. I want to go do a spin in your airplane." Henry Bowman shook his head.

"No."

"If you take me up in your airplane right now and do a spin, I'll got to bed with you," Carol said suddenly. She had not decided what she would do if he said 'yes.'

"What?" Henry Bowman exclaimed as he almost choked on his hamburger.

"You always had a crush on me in high school," she said quickly. "I knew it all the time, and you even admitted it to me last summer. Take me flying and then we'll go to bed together."

"Carol," Henry said, completely overwhelmed by the way the evening was going, "you've got that new guy from Rollins-Bill, isn't it?-that you're crazy about. You can't just-"

"Henry Bowman! You are the biggest liar in the whole world!" Carol Weston almost shouted. "When in your life have you ever cared about what some other guy felt when it came to going after a girl? Particularly a guy you've never even met!"

Henry's mouth opened but nothing came out. Carol was right, and he was dumbstruck.

"You've been drinking today, and that's why you won't take me flying now, isn't it? You can drive a car when you're about to pass out; you can go slow and maybe you'll scrape the curb but everything will be okay. I should know, Mom used to do it all the time. But if you take me flying and something goes wrong, we'll both die, and you know it."

Henry nodded. "I did drink today." Carol said nothing. "Most of the afternoon, off and on," he added. She remained silent. "I won't fly with liquor still in my system." He shook his head. "Let the nose stay down a little too long coming out of some maneuvers, you can overspeed the airframe in a hurry. Make the tail come off." He looked up at his friend and smiled. Carol saw that his eyes were wet. "I may show up late for parties now, and worry about what out-of-town boyfriends might think, but I won't fly a plane with alcohol in my bloodstream." Carol Weston took his hand and squeezed it.

"What happened to you, Henry?" she said softly.

Henry Bowman took a deep breath. He wanted to tell her, but his shame was so thick it was palpable, and he found he could not talk about the rape. He ended up giving Carol an edited version of what had happened that night in August. The attack by the four men was revised into one of terrible violence, but without the sexual component. The gang's motive was unknown, although since it was night, mistaken identity was possible.

Henry explained that he had received a severe beating, which was true enough, and that the men had run when a car had come by and shone its bright lights on them, which was true as well. Henry told Carol Weston that he had nightmares about that night, but that alcohol seemed to prevent them. This was also true. However, the last time Henry Bowman had gone to sleep completely sober had been over a month ago, so he could not honestly say that the nightmares were still returning whenever he quit drinking. He admitted this fact also.

"Have you ever gone back on your word?" Carol asked after they had talked for a while. "No, not that I know of." / -wonder where this is heading?

"Then I'm going to hold you to it. We're going someplace tonight where you don't have to get dressed up. I go there with Mom sometimes, and we might run into someone I'd like you to meet. He's a pilot for TWA, and he goes there a lot. They've got good coffee, which I know you hate, but I like it, and you can drink sodas. It's not far from here."

Guess I'd better shut up and do what she says Henry told himself. I just hope she was kidding about going to bed. I don't need another disaster tonight. "Okay. Tell me where to turn," Henry said as he twisted the key in the ignition and started the engine.

"East on Clayton Road past the movie theatre to Bellvue," she replied.

Henry Bowman was about to go to his first AA meeting.

March 10, 1972 "More dead, Ray. Near the border."

Ray Johnson looked over at his head tracker. There were three nationalist groups in Angola. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), and the Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). It was this last group that was most prevalent in the local area.

Contrary to what was implied by the names of the three groups, all of them spent most o f their time fighting amongst themselves despite the fact that their goals were, in theory at least, similar. More and more often, internal disagreements among the leaders and the members were turning bloody.

"How many?" Raymond asked.

"Ten, maybe twenty."

Johnson shook his head. Damned bohunks are going to get tired of putting up with this shit one of these days. Thank God all my real funds are in Rhodesia. He looked around at the camp he and his workers had built. Been a good nine years. Time to get serious about moving on.

Ray Johnson's premonition was accurate. Two years later, the Portuguese military would enact a coup and Portugal would immediately grant its Angolan colonies independence. The three nationalist groups would continue their war, with the U.S. and China supporting the FNLA, the Soviet Union and Cuba assisting the MPLA, and South Africa backing UNITA. Over a decade later, the FNLA would fade away and the other two groups would continue their fighting.

By that time, however, Ray Johnson would be long gone.

"Man, that was bizarre, wasn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Henry Bowman asked as they walked out the men's room and headed for the exit door. Five-hour documentaries were taxing on the bladder even when they were shown on successive nights.

"Just the whole way the French reacted. I mean, those were Nazis, for God's sake! Did you catch some of what they were saying? Unbelievable." The young man shook his head at the thought.

At Amherst, as at most colleges, films shown for specific courses were o pen to all students so long as seats were available. At Henry's urging, he and another geology major had just spent two nights viewing a film that one of the European History classes had screened, The Sorrow and the Pity. It was a Swiss documentary on occupied France during WWII.

"You have to realize, many people saw those Nazis the same way we see policemen."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well," Henry said, "cops are around, but the place isn't crawling with them, right? Here in the U.S., I mean."

"Yeah..."

"Same way in most of France, back in '42. Especially if you lived in the south part of the country. For most people, life was pretty much the same as before. You lived in the same house, went to the same grocer, same doctor, had the same job, all that. You just kept your head down." Henry thought of something.

"Look, when you glance in your rearview mirror and see a police car behind you, you wish he wasn't there, right? You don't want him around, do you? And it isn't just you. Your parents probably pay loads of taxes, and they're the same way, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"But what would you or your dad do if someone riding in the back of your car said 'Oh, Christ, a goddamned cop's following us' and leaned out the window and blasted him? You'd shit, right?" Henry was becoming animated.

"And if you saw some stranger kill a cop-the same cop who just gave you a speeding ticket because he had to make his ticket quota, what would you do? Would you clap, and say 'Good riddance, asshole?' Hell, no, you'd immediately report it. You'd give a full description, and you'd read in the papers about the patrolman's fine record. You'd hear about the number of arrests he made, and how he'd been promoted to lieutenant sooner than anyone else in his class at the academy, and what a good husband and father he was, and you'd see a picture of his grieving widow and three fatherless kids, and you'd feel really sorry for them. Even though at the same time, you're trying to figure out what to do about car insurance since you got canceled.

"It was the same way with the Nazis. To most French people, the Krauts were just policemen giving out speeding tickets and roughing up long-haired war protesters, and the guys in the Resistance were kind of like the Black Panthers. Except with correct grammar and better-tasting breakfasts," he added as an afterthought.

"I can't believe that," the friend said. "The Nazis weren't police! They killed their own citizens!" Henry turned to face his friend, and shook his head.

"You don't think cops in this country thirty-five years ago helped lynch black guys? Weren't those black guys citizens here? Nazis were just police in a police state. They had wives and kids and worried about paying the mortgage and whether they'd get laid after a hard day's work at the death camp just like Deputy Billy Bob in Alabama worries about making the payment on his pickup truck while he's wiping the blood off his nigger knocker." Henry gathered his thoughts and went on.

"Look, Hitler's goal was to rule all of Europe, not destroy it, right? What did that mean? It meant crushing the dissenters, not killing off everyone. People like our parents? Krauts left 'em alone. Gave 'em brownie points when they ratted out the troublemakers. You're from Chicago-did your parents or any of their friends have anything to worry about during the '68 convention? No, they didn't have long hair and they weren't out holding up protest signs. I bet some of 'em were even glad to see those irritating hippies get their heads busted. Am I right?" Henry went on before his friend could answer.

"Hell, you know the history," Henry said, unaware that his friend did not. "After Poland in '39, Denmark and Norway rolled over for the Krauts in '40. Took a week or so. Luxembourg took a day, Holland lasted about five. Belgians held out for two weeks, then caved in. Brits sent troops to northern France to try to help the Frogs fight off the Germans. France lasted a few weeks, and the only reason it took that long instead of a day or two was that Joe Stalin kept half the German army occupied on the Russian front, losing about ten million soldiers of his own in the process.

"As soon as the Krauts drove the Brits away at Dunkirk, France rolled over and spread her legs right now. Germans went into Paris unopposed in June of 1940. Italy said it was neutral, but when Mussolini saw the Krauts were about to kick off their shoes and put their feet up in the Louvre, he jumped into Hitler's arms like a waterfront whore when the troop ship pulls into port.

"Churchill was determined not to cave in, but the Brits hauled ass out of Greece, and they hauled ass out of Yugoslavia. When the Brits hauled ass out of France, they managed to leave all their guns behind at Dunkirk, don't ask me why. The folks in England finally figured out they were next on Hitler's shopping list, so they hunted up all the grouse guns and hunting rifles in the country, which wasn't much against MG34 belt-feds and MP40 submachine guns. They were so desperate they even ran around to museums and got spears, since they didn't have anything to fight with. We shipped over boatloads of real guns, but England still would have been fucked if Germany hadn't declared war on us a few days after Pearl Harbor, which was why we went over and saved their bacon." Henry realized he had gotten off the subject.

"Those old guys they showed in the movie? The ones who had been in the Resistance? They said right on film that the only reason they were in the Resistance at all was they were Communists, and Stalin told 'em Hitler was almost to Moscow. People in France viewed those guys as a bunch of nuts. That was the Resistance movement."

"How do you know so much about it?"

Henry shrugged. "Went to a good high school, my dad was a history teacher at a local college, and other relatives of mine were right in the middle of the worst of it with the Nazis. They've all told me what it was like-the way it was for them while it was happening.

"By the middle of 1941, Krauts owned all of Europe except Switzerland and England. Germany had the war won, just about.

"Switzerland, of course, would have kept its independence. Just like today, in 1941 every Swiss citizen had a machine gun and a bunch of ammo in his house. They've been practicing blowing their bridges and carrying out mountain ambushes for a couple centuries, so they were ready to slaughter the Krauts in the Alps and get back home in time for dinner. Hitler wasn't about to fuck with that country, even with Mussolini's dick.

"But Great Britain was hanging on by its fingertips, and old Joe Kennedy, our Ambassador to England, he was sending back cables to Roosevelt saying, 'Hey pal, you're backing the wrong horse in this one'." Henry shook his head.

"You don't go to sleep one night a free man and wake up the next morning to find you're a slave in your own country. It happens gradually, and when you realize it, it's too late." He looked at his friend. "You know about frogs and hot water?" The young man shook his head.

'Toss a frog in a pot of boiling water, and he'll jump out because it's boiling. That's like you looking at a picture of Jews being used for medical experiments at a concentration camp. 'AAGH! How awful!'" Henry mimicked. "But stick the frog in a pot of room temperature water, and put it on the stove, and he'll swim around happily until he's dead." Henry laughed without humor. "That's why when these people in France, and Holland, and Norway, and Luxembourg, and Denmark, and Belgium, and Yugoslavia, and Great Britain let themselves get put in a position of helplessness, they had to beg for a country which hadn't been so stupid to bail them out."