Minid, with beady eyes, protruding lips, and a receding chin from which waggled a sparse, reddish-black goatee. Although he was several inches shy of five feet, he was clearly an adult, and a lankily muscular one whose small size did little to calm my fears of him. At length I took a cautious step forward and nodded apologetically at the habiline, who, keeping me in his sights, began to creep around me in a cunning arc. My principal concern was that he might be leading the other males home.
“Listen,” I began, “I’m sorry. It’s just that—”
From several feet away he lofted a globule of saliva and hit me squarely on the chin. Then, while I was wiping my face with the back of my hand, he scampered into the village screeching and chattering and calling down the wrath of Ngai. A terrible hubbub broke out among the encampment’s denizens, and I fled, my legs churning and my fancy indelicately conjuring up a dozen different ways to die at the hands of these protohuman creatures. Soon enough, however, I realized that they were not following me and that the Minid I had just encountered was probably their appointed sentry. I had caught him taking an unauthorized and ill-advised break, and each of us had scared the gibbering bejesus out of the other.
For a long time, then, I stood on the edge of the vast savannah trying to recover my wind and quiet the thunderous pounding of my heart. These things done, I began to laugh, and my laughter doubled me over into a self-protective crouch, and in this crouch, still laughing, I made myself consider what I must do next.
Chapter Seven
Morón de la Frontera
July 1963
COLONEL ROLAND UNGER, THE VICE COMMANDER of the SAC Reflex Base near Morón de la Frontera, approximately thirty miles southeast of Seville, reminded Jeannette Monegal of Douglas MacArthur whittled down to about two-thirds scale. In the light coming through his office windows from the flight line, the hair on his forearms sparkled like aluminum filings and his shoes radiated a dazzling ebony shine. He stood beside his desk in crisp summer khakis, staring bemusedly at the tiny, dark-skinned child who was pushing his coaster chair into a cabinet on which stood the official photographs of the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the local base commander. The child seemed to be determined to topple these photographs, but Colonel Unger made no move to hinder or distract him.
“I am not a social worker,” he told the people who had requested this audience. “None of us was sent out here to see to the daily needs of displaced Spanish nationals. Orphans just aren’t our line.”
“What if they’re part American?” Jeannette asked. She and her husband, Staff Sergeant Hugo Monegal, had kept the abandoned child in their quarters in Santa Clara for the past five days, and the point of this interview was to make him a permanent member of their family. She had never wanted anything else quite so passionately, and her commitment to her goal both surprised and pleased her.
To the Monegals’ left sat Major Carl Hollis, who, as an agent of military intelligence, routinely wore civilian clothes. Today he had attired himself in cotton ducks and a seersucker sports jacket with blue and white stripes. He had a neat brown moustache, threaded with strands of amber, and a pair of mirror-lensed sunglasses that he was dangling nervously from his right hand. Colonel Unger had invited him to the interview, and Jeannette was uncertain whether to regard him as an ally or an official marplot.
“Look at him, sir,” Hollis encouraged the colonel. “The kid’s as red, white, and blue as Willie Mays, if you know what I mean.”
Colonel Unger replied, “He also happens to have been born to a Spanish mother, in a Spanish city, and it’s the mother’s nationality that traditionally decides these things. We’re on pretty shaky ground here. You can’t just arbitrarily take custody of a bona fide Sevillano, Major Hollis.”
“Maybe not de jure, sir, but de facto we’ve already done it. The mother handed him over to Drew Blanchard’s kid, Pam, and I’d lay odds he’s an indiscretion of Lucky James Bledsoe’s. That’s Master Sergeant Lavoy Bledsoe’s son, sir, and they’ve already rotated stateside to a base in Alabama.”
“You think we should get in touch with the Bledsoes?”
“Jesus, no,” said Hollis, leaning forward earnestly. “They probably don’t even know