Colonel Felter had announced that he had some messages to write—confirming again, as far as Jack was concerned, that the briefcase he had seen at the airport had contained “traffic” for him from Washington—and went to his room.
With nothing else to do, Jack and Father had played—before it got too brutally hot—not quite a full set of tennis, and then, stripping down on the run to their tennis shorts, had dived into the pool. When they climbed out, Nimbi had placed a beer-and-ice-filled cooler, and a copy of L’Avenir, the major newspaper, by one of the poolside tables.
There wasn’t much in L’Avenir but rather effusive reports of the many accomplishments of President Joseph Kasavubu.
“There’s not one fucking word in here about what’s going on in the boonies,” Father said, in mingled wonderment and disgust, as he tossed his part of the newspaper on the tiles.
“This is the Congo, Father. If you ignore a problem, maybe it will go away.”
“Well, somebody should tell your pal Mobutu that what’s going on in Stanleyville is going to get worse, not better. Ignoring it is not a viable option.”
“Mobutu knows,” Jack said. “Kasavubu is the problem. And we may not get a chance to tell Mobutu anything. My father really expected that there would be an invitation to dinner waiting for us.”
“You think he’s stiffing us?”
“This is the Congo,” Jack said. “You never know.”
Father reached into the cooler and tossed Jack a beer, then took one for himself.
A few minutes later, just as he realized his beer bottle was empty, Jack heard the sirens, but paid little attention to them. For one thing, sirens in Léopoldville didn’t mean what they had before Independence. Then the use of sirens had been limited to the Force Publique, the local police, the fire department, and ambulances.
Father Lunsford did.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
“Probably some Congolese general, or a second deputy assistant secretary of state for something or other, going home for lunch, or to his mistress’s house,” Jack said. “The larger your motorcade, the more sirens and flashing lights you have, the more important you are.”
And the other standard symbol of power is the elegance of the mistress, most often a Belgian, sometimes a Frenchwoman, but almost always a pale-skinned blonde. I wanted to add that, but didn’t. Because it would make me sound like a racist?
Fuck it. Father knows better than that.
“The other status symbol is a white mistress,” he said.
“Really?”
“Usually Belgian, but sometimes French. The blonder, the better. ”
“Uh,” Father said. Jack waited for him to go on, but that was all Father said.
From where they were sitting, the roads that circled the property couldn’t be seen, so there was no telling in which direction the motorcade was going.
He idly noticed that the sound of the sirens had died and decided that whoever was sounding them had arrived at his house— or his mistress’s house—for lunch. That made him wonder what Mrs. Marjorie Portet was doing at this hour—it was almost half past six in Fayetteville; she was probably making supper; or else she had gone to Fort Rucker, where it was half past five and she was helping her mother prepare supper.
That thought led to another, of Mrs. Marjorie Portet making breakfast for him in Fayetteville, attired in one of his shirts— only—which costume he found incredibly erotic. After a minute or so of this, he decided that what he was doing was torturing himself, and reached for another beer.
“Heads up!” Father said, softly but with great intensity.
Jack looked up from the ice-and-beer-filled cooler.
Four large Congolese paratroopers, in immaculate, heavily starched camouflage pattern fatigues, holding Fabrique National 7-mm automatic rifles, were trotting down the lawn from the house. They took up defensive positions—looking outward, toward the fence.
Jack twisted in his chair. There were two more paratroopers on the patio by the house, and another one walking across the lawn, smiling broadly. This one was armed with a Browning pistol in a web holster, and his collar tabs bore the insignia of a lieutenant general of the Congolese Army. A lanky white man in a linen suit walked beside him.
Jack got out of the chair, holding a beer bottle in his hand.
“Jesus Christ, Joseph,” he blurted in Swahili. “You scared hell out of me.”
“Jacques, my old friend!” Mobutu said, holding his arms wide.
They embraced, and kissed, in the European manner. Mobutu was liberally doused with cologne.
“You know my friend Dr. Dannelly, of course?” Mobutu asked, and then switched to