— I don't know who Paul knows! And I mean that's not what it's about anyhow, if you think Paul wants to have a war whoever made up these stories you don't even…
— You remember Lester? came up here once looking foi me and you wouldn't let him in the door?
— I mean that's what I mean, the kind of friends you have if you'd trust him, if you'd trust anything he…
— I told you they weren't all friends didn't I? I've never trusted Lester a damned inch, black suit black tie and the black Bible he showed up over there paying his own way, they don't send them out like the Catholics do, one look at him and the locals took him for some kind of intelligence so did the Baganda, out there trying to sell them on the Second Coming next thing there he is in the New Stanley bar drinking orange juice and no Bible in sight. They'd recruited him. Cruikshank spotted the cold blooded fervour in those hard little eyes, he was Chief of Station, set up a Somali they had ten years on for stealing some truck tires and when Lester woke up he knew he was finished, homosexuality's the bottom of the pit out there, everybody taking him for an agent he might as well be one. All the discipline, obedience all the missionary zeal put a gun or a Bible in hands like that and they're just as deadly. They brought him in working on a contingency plan, they do them all the time just to generate paper work, cable traffic, show Langley they're on the job writing these little scenarios, setting up these confrontations till somebody draws the line. It was all routine but finally Cruikshank was so damned well known, he ran a cover as a dealer in local artifacts but you'd see him sitting alone at the end of the bar nobody would talk to him, they shipped him to Angola and when the mess they made of things up there was over they brought him home and gave him a medal he can never wear anyplace. One of those childish secret rituals they hold down there at Langley, put him out to pasture and he set himself up as a consultant like all these dreary faceless sons of bitches the one thing they know is how to survive. Hundred thousand dollar retainer the one thing they've learned is where the money moves and who's got it and the one thing they've cornered is how to get in on it, call themselves risk analysts and the bigger the mess they've left behind them the higher the fee. Iran, Chile, the Phoenix program, Angola, Cambodia, one monstrous miscalculation a few thousand body counts later and they're right there holding their heads up in Le Cirque and Acapulco, obsequious interviews in the Times and discreet dinner parties comparing their little black books with the other black tie refuse, even an expresident or two or their dazed widows, a few decorators, haute couture, any transient damned joke on reality while he's peddling the thing itself on the side in a poisonous little package like Lester. All that disenchanted missionary fervour would never lie steal or kill except in the name of a higher cause, doesn't smoke or drink or chase women all the damned fruits of youth gone bitter like the, like what falls from that old wild cherry down here at the foot of the lawn. Like the Zen master pointing to the forest and asking the acolyte what he sees. Woodcutters. And what else. All the straight tall young trees are being cut down. And what else. Well nothing but, no there's one twisted, rotting, bent old tree they're leaving alone and that's Cruik-shank, that's the successful survivor. Grimes brings him in as consultant, he brings in Lester and Paul brings this idiot Ude blundering into history with his battalions of ignorance hell bent on confronting the powers of evil with the cross of Jes…
— And that's where you've got it all backwards! I mean if you think Paul knows what the, if you think Paul and Mister Grimes that he likes Paul? If you think Paul and Lester that they, that Mister Grimes never liked Paul no, no he never trusted him he always thought Paul was just out for what he could get and he, that he wasn't even…
— Nobody likes Paul no, no that's not the point. If you don't own them you can't trust them that's Grimes isn't it? he owned Teakell didn't he? Get down to these hungry low level agents it's better if they don't like each other because the whole damned thing's based on mistrust, better if they don't even know each other people like Paul and Lester, they're just pieces in a puzzle who suddenly get grand ideas and take off on their own. They'll get credit if it works and they know damned well they'll be covered if it doesn't. Paul thinks he's been using Ude but Ude's been using him and Lester's been using them both because he wrote the scenario, set up that site get a few missionaries killed and then that plane gets shot down, Cruikshank pulls out the scenario dusts it off and we're all back in the sixteenth century copper, gold, slavery sanitized in what they call the homelands and the cross of Jesus going on before. That speech of Teakell's in the Senate when he left on his so called fact finding tour, this great threat to the mineral resources of the entire free world? That dusty little sliver of land it could have been anywhere, we must face up at last to this conspiracy casting the shadow of evil over the face of mankind, preserve the nation's honour, pledge ourselves unflinchingly to defend the vital interests of the United States wherever they are threatened that's his seed company, the family seed company, that's his great Food for Africa program. Starving countries get US aid credits to buy US products and the Teakell family seed company's got the patents on hybrid corn strains so they buy that and it blows their planting schedules to pieces even now, I liked that even now. Even now the wanton killing of two young men of God venturing forth from this mission for water, water which we take for granted with the turn of a faucet good God, this mission bringing the message of Christian love that was the scenario, get a few missionaries killed and draw the line. You wonder what the hell he thought sitting there five thousand feet up with a drink in his hand when he saw that missile coming in and the end of the world in smoke and fire, talk about meeting the Lord in the clouds he, he… He turned to see her numbed. — I didn't, I, I didn't mean… his hands clenching nothing — I didn't mean, sorry's no good no you're right but I'm so damned, damned sorry! And he stood there hands drawn in fists. — I didn't think. I didn't think because he, why he was on that plane, why Billy was on that plane!
— But he was.
— No but that's, a flight out of a place that you take what you can get, everybody knew Teakell was coming through on his phony fact finding trip that's what it was for. Everybody knew things changed course when the President got him and sent him down for the funeral of South Africa's President as his personal representative you grab some bush airline and Billy got on it, they don't even know who brought it down. Look at the paper it says new information indicates the flight was targeted by one of those black left resistance movements because of Senator Teakell's outspoken position on the aggressive instincts of this evil empire and the whole damned, not for attribution, new information from intelligence sources not for attribution you know damned well who that is, Cruikshank earning his fee and Grimes' syndicate damned glad to pay it, this plane strays into the wrong airspace anybody could have brought it down. South African missile batteries all the way through there they'll shoot at anything that moves and they'll hit it. They'll hit it and they hit it this time and sucked us right in, this carrier group off Mombasa and destroyers running down the Mozambique channel they've sucked us right in. Restore the national dignity with a war they can win this time and the chance to move up a few grades, peace time army they'll sit there for twenty years without making colonel but combat brings that first star so close they can taste it. Billions of dollars in fancy weaponry finally give them a chance to see if it works, turn the Great Rift Valley from Maputo right up to the Horn back to the hellfire time it came into being, up the Jordan valley through the Dead Sea where the Lord rained brimstone and fire on the cities of the plain and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace they can't wait listen, Elizabeth listen. I meant it. Pack up and we're gone there's nothing to keep you here now, nothing you can do, it's done. Playing out their scenario over that little scrap of land and every pygmy in Congress with his tribute to Teakell up defending the mineral resources of the free world where there's nothing but thornbush. It's as good a place as any, that was Lester. I told you madness coming one way and stupidity the other, put the house here on the market I've already called the agent, pack up and leave.