Macintyre gave a grunt. “This is a little pocket of abnormality, actually. What’s happening out there in the jungle, that’s the real world.”
Amanda nodded at the irony. “True, it is very much a matter of perspective. I’ve been trying to gain a little more of that lately. I’ve been doing a lot of professional reading lately about brown-water naval operations during the Vietnam war, the Market Time and Game Warden patrols, that sort of thing. I daresay that’s where a degree of this mind-set comes from.”
“Did you catch Don Sheppard’s book Riverine?”
Amanda gave an animated nod. “Oh yes, excellent. Both as a military study and as a dam good read. Those men faced many of the same challenges and tactical situations off the coast of Vietnam that we are now with UNAFIN. I’m hoping to learn a bit about what works and what doesn’t.”
“Picked up anything good yet?”
“Um, yes. A great deal. In many ways, we won the coastal war off South Vietnam. However, given the strategic situation, that alone wasn’t an adequate enough victory to turn the overall tide of the conflict.”
Macintyre lifted the rye half of his own postmeal Shawn O’Farrell. “Do you think we can pull the win off here?”
“Speaking frankly, Admiral, I’m still not sure. Come back in another month, and I’ll let you know.”
Macintyre felt the corner of his mouth quirk up. “You’ve got a date.”
“Admiral Macintyre, good afternoon, sir.” Another naval officer in tropic whites paused at their table. Handsome in a lean and dark way, his voice carried a mild French accent and the uniform hat tucked under his arm a French navy cap badge.
Macintyre felt a sudden irrational surge of irritation, both at the intrusion and at the conventionalities he was required now to obey. Masking both, he rose to shake hands.
“Commander Trochard. It’s a pleasure to see you again. May I introduce Captain Amanda Garrett, my Tactical Action Group commander. Amanda, Commander Jacques Trochard, captain of the patrol corvette Fleurette.”
“Ah, Captain Garrett,” Trochard said jovially. “The legend at last!”
Amanda had risen to shake hands as well. Only, when Trochard’s fingers closed around hers, the French officer smiled and bowed over her hand in a deft, flowing move of Gallic grace, his lips not quite touching its back.
Maclntyre’s teeth creaked in his jaw.
If the Frenchman’s flamboyant gesture was an attempt to lift a moment of blushing disconcertment from Amanda, it failed. With a tilt of her head and a light smile, she accepted the bow as her due, a queen politely acknowledging the act of a lesser courtier.
“It is a pleasure to meet you in person, Captain Garrett,” the French officer murmured, straightening, “especially after our numerous telephone and radio conversations.”
“You’ve worked together already, then?” Macintyre inquired, he hoped, politely.
“In a way. Commander Trochard and I had a minor difficulty we had to deal with a short time ago.”
“Indeed, Admiral,” Trochard added. “One of the crew of her Dinassaut sent my best torpedoman home with a broken jaw.”
“One which we both agreed he richly deserved.”
“After considerable discussion, yes.” Trochard threw his head back and laughed. “I will not make the politically incorrect error of saying that Captain Garrett is a formidable opponent for a woman. Rather, I will say that she is a formidable opponent and a woman.”
“You’re learning, Commander,” she murmured.
Following that exchange, Macintyre found that he didn’t mind offering the French Corvette commander a seat quite so much.
“For a moment only, Admiral,” he accepted, sinking into the chair. “Duty calls in a shrill unpleasant voice, and I am scheduled to fly back to the Fleurette shortly.”
“As with me,” Amanda said. “One of my seafighters is making a patrol turnaround at Conakry this afternoon, and I’ll be going out with her.”
“Captain Garrett and I were just discussing the situation here in theater,” Macintyre said, “comparing it with the late and unlamented conflict in Southeast Asia. You’ve worked these waters for a number of years, Commander. Do you see any parallels?”
“Only one.” Trochard paused for a moment to order a glass of white wine. “That being that both are lost causes,” he concluded.
“You believe so, Commander?” Amanda challenged quietly. “I’m not quite ready to admit that yet.”
“That, my good Captain, is because you are newly come here and the sense of futility has yet to settle in.… And do not frown at me so, for I love la belle Afrique and I hope to come here to live after I retire. Granted a ‘here’ remains.”
Trochard’s drink arrived. Taking up the slender, stemmed glass, he leaned back in his chair. “Let me tell you of Africa, my friends, and of what we have done to her. All of you Americans are new here. We French, however, have been here a long time. We came with the other Europeans, back when this continent was an honest wilderness and each black tribe and kingdom held what land it could by tradition and by the strength of its spears. It was a system that worked for them, and they were content.
“We Europeans, however, had different ideas. We divided Africa up like a pie, each colonial power taking its own juicy slice. We drew lines on maps, governing those lines with colonial administrators and enforcing them with garrison bayonets. We did not care that our lines had arbitrarily been drawn across tribal territories or cultural and language groupings. Our system worked for us, and we were content.
“But the day of the colonies passed and the Europeans all went home, taking our administrators and garrisons with us. But we left behind our lines on the map. We left Africa divided into all these damn little boxes, each box inhabited by broken and separated peoples and by nervous and fragile little governments. The people do not like the way things are. The people want for things to be better. But the governments are afraid to change those little lines on the map for fear of losing what they do have.”
Trochard took another sip of bitter wine. “Africa is no longer a collection of colonies. But it is not yet Africa again, either. Africa does not know what it is, and that is the problem.”
“And what would you say the solution is, Commander?” Macintyre asked.
“A solution? Here is a solution for you. Not the one Paris or Washington would propose, but the one I, Jacques Trochard, would propose. Let us all step back and let the whole bloody thing collapse — the lines, the boxes, the governments, everything. Let it all go to hell and then let the Africans pick up the pieces and put it back together to suit themselves.”
“And how many people would die in that kind of collapse, Commander?” Amanda’s voice held low.
“The Admiral asked for a solution, my good Captain, and I gave one. I do not say it is a good solution, it is just the only one I have.”
Macintyre gave an acknowledging grunt and picked up his beer chaser. “I have to admit I don’t have any patented answers either.”
“Nor do I,” Amanda said, picking up her own glass. “But may I make a proposal, gentlemen? Let’s try and buy Africa a little more time. Maybe somebody smarter than we are will come along.”
Three glass rims rang solemnly together.
Commander Trochard’s melancholy assessment lingered on after his departure.
“Do you think Trochard is right, Admiral, and that we are bucking a lost cause?”
Macintyre shook his head. “It’s hard to say, Amanda. But I do know that for every true lost cause in this world, there are half a dozen that people just gave up on too soon.”
She flashed a heartening smile. “I agree. And if I have to fail, I prefer a futile but valiant struggle to an apathetic acceptance.”