“The American Embassy?”
“Right. He demanded asylum. Threw himself on the Ambassador’s mercy.”
“Then they called you in.”
Myerson sighed. “I tried to bring him out, Charlie. I didn’t want to disturb your vacation.”
“Sure.”
“I tried. I botched it. Is that blunt enough to satisfy you?”
“I’m tempted to gloat, sure enough.”
“He’s still there. In the Embassy. An acute embarrassment to everybody — British, Africans, Americans. I can’t guess which of them hate him the most.”
“Is he worth anything?”
“On the open market? Nothing. The inside secrets of the finances of a two-bit third world nationlet — who cares? No. Two cents would buy him.”
“Well, I guess the Ambassador must be a human being. Didn’t want to throw the poor wretch to the wolves and all that. And anyhow we’d lose face if we reneged on the asylum. That it?”
“Acute embarrassment, yes. By protecting him we offend our African hosts; but by turning him loose we’d be welshing on a commitment. The British, of course, are laughing their heads off.”
“Why do the Africans want him?”
“He betrayed them and he’s getting away with it. They can’t have that. They need to prove it’s dangerous for anyone to cross them. Charlie, listen — all else aside, there’s no doubt in my mind but that if we gave him back to the Africans he’d last forty-eight hours at the outside. An accident, of course.”
The ketch dwindled toward the horizon, hoisting more sail. Myerson said, “It’s a dreary mess. The man’s of no value, not even to himself. If we do get him out, what of it? At best he’ll find some petty civil service job in England. At worst he’ll end up sleeping off cheap wine in alleys. Nobody cares about him — nobody needs to. He’s a drip. But we have to try, don’t we. We have to give him a chance.”
“I suppose. How did you try to get him out?”
“Laundry van. They searched it with bayonets. Pricked him pretty good. In the arm. We managed to hustle him back inside. A couple of shots were fired — no injuries but the Africans were pretty sore about it. They’ve quadrupled the guard around the Embassy. It’s not rifles now, it’s machine guns and riot troops. They’re searching every vehicle and pedestrian that comes out of the building. You couldn’t get a mosquito out of there now. I confess it’s my fault — the laundry truck was my idea. We had a private jet waiting. It’s only a five minute flight across the border.”
“Is the plane still available?”
“Yes.”
“Then all we have to do is get him to the plane and he’s home free.”
“Sure. But if we try again and fail we’ll be laughing-stocks from Johannesburg to Cairo. They’ll tie a can to my tail. Yours too.”
“Why not just leave him in there until the Africans find something else to occupy them?”
“No good. Every minute he remains in that building he’s a thorn in both sides. He could become the flashpoint of a nasty international incident.”
“So we have to get him out safely and soon.”
“Soonest.”
I stood up. “Let’s have a look at the Embassy.”
It had been Government House in colonial times, built in Cecil Rhodes’ time — Empire, the raj, so forth. It had been built to impress. Now it had the slightly gone-to-seed look that creeps up on buildings in the tropics — a symptom of dampness and heat and termites: the lines seemed to sag and things had gone grey in patches and parts of it appeared to be crumbling; possibly it was a trick of the afternoon shadows.
It stood behind a high wrought-iron fence. There were palm trees, flame trees, acacias. Six Doric columns supported the high porte-cochere. American flag. Four marines on duty at the gate.
The African troops slouched at intervals outside the fence. I counted twenty-eight men, a half-track APC, two jeeps and a radio truck; probably there were more behind the Embassy. I said drily to Myerson, “I don’t see anything those four marines shouldn’t be able to handle.”
“These are hardly the days of the Panay in the Yangtze. But I’ll admit there was something to gunboat diplomacy. Tell me, Charlie, did you actually serve under Teddy Roosevelt?”
“Why, I did my boot training under George Armstrong Custer.”
“That’s what I thought.”
A dusty bus drew up and decanted a camera-bedecked crowd of tourists, most of them Japanese, a few Americans and Europeans. The tour guide was a little man in sunglasses with a grey beard that looked as if rats had slept in it. From the color of his nose he was a drinking man. He said in a piping German-accented voice, “This way please, follow me,” and led the tourists past the watchful marines onto the Embassy grounds.
I was astonished. “They just come and go like that?”
“Nobody wants to stop them. The country needs tourists desperately and this building’s a landmark. Bismarck and Queen Elizabeth slept in it. Not, I assume, on the same night. Actually she was Princess Elizabeth then. They—” he was talking about the tourists now “— only see the public rooms on the ground floor, of course. No access to working Embassy areas. You need a pass, ID and an armed escort to get past the doors. I think the tour groups visit twice a day. I heard part of the old German’s spiel this morning. He’s pretty good — an old Africa hand, used to hunt rhino with Selous when he was a boy.”
We walked inside and had to clear ourselves with the marine guard. The soldiers across the street watched balefully. We went through the main doors and passed through a series of interior checkpoints and finally entered a comfortable but not very large office whose occupant, like the government-green paint, was drab and in need of a touchup. I knew him vaguely from past acquaintance: Oscar Claiborne, twenty-five-year man, passed over numerous times for promotion, assigned to one backwater job after another. Officially he was some variety of trade attaché; actually he was the Agency’s stringer. One look at him and you yawned.
“Oscar, you know Charlie Dark.”
We shook hands. Myerson said to Oscar, “Sit-rep?” He deludes himself into thinking his clumsy use of jargon phrases will ingratiate him with the men in the field. Sit-rep, some years ago, used to be Agency lingo for Situation Report.
Oscar said, “No change. He’s in his room lying on his side, nursing the bad arm. Taking things calmly enough, I’ll give him that.”
I said, “How bad is the bayonet injury?”
“Superficial. It’s healing nicely.” Oscar beamed at me. “Hey, old buddy, how’re they hangin’?”
“I’d like to talk to Brent,” I said to Myerson.
August brent was undersized and sharp-featured and had a cockney look. A monk’s fringe of limp sandy hair ran around the back of his bald cranium. His speech was rapid and clipped, the English of a man born in Africa. I liked him well enough; he was too ingratiating but I attributed that to his obvious fear. I was glad to see he wasn’t sweating unduly. That symptom is almost impossible to disguise.
We talked for a bit — I wanted him to warm to me. I needed his trust because he’d only go through with it if he believed I could be depended on. The scheme had occurred to me immediately and it was considerably less complex than many I’d essayed.
Oscar Claiborne interrupted us and took me outside into the hall. “Bad news, I’m afraid. They’ve issued a fugitive execution warrant on him.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he can be shot on sight. Legally.”
“And they call this a freedom-loving democracy.” I went in search of Myerson.
In the Embassy cafeteria Myerson brooded at me, watching with a sneer while I put away a big meal. All he had was coffee and all he said was, “I’ll hand them one thing — it’s fantastic coffee.”