“You’re going to have to try tomorrow if he doesn’t call back today,” Lunsford said.
Jack nodded, and sat down beside Peters.
“Anything I can get for you, Peters?”
“No, sir.”
“Hungry?”
“I could eat a little something, yes, sir.”
Jack looked up at the house, saw Nimbi, the houseboy, and mimed eating. Nimbi trotted to the table, and Jack spoke to him in Swahili. Nimbi nodded and trotted back to the house.
“Beer now,” Jack said. “Steak and a salad in twenty minutes. Okay?”
“Sounds good.”
When the beer was delivered, it drew Father, Doubting Thomas, and Aunt Jemima from the pool like a magnet.
Lunsford held up his bottle of beer.
“We’re going to have to start paying you for the beer, accommodations, and chow,” he said.
“Forget it,” Jack said.
“No, it’s one of the things we have to figure out,” Lunsford said. “We’re on separate rations, which means, apparently because the State Department has somebody who figures this out, we get standard separate rations pay, plus forty percent, because Léopoldville— all the Congo—is forty percent more expensive to live in than Washington, D.C. Same thing for the quarters allowance.”
“Really?” Jack said, interested. He’d never thought of the subject before.
“Really,” Lunsford said. “As of this moment, in addition to your other duties, you are Rations and Quarters Officer of Detachment 17. Once a month you will, as Rations and Quarters Officer, present a statement to me, stating that adequate quarters and messing facilities were not available. I will sign the first endorsement thereto, forwarding it to the military attaché for action, whereupon he will lay money on you, which you will then disperse to the troops.”
“I have to do that?” Jack said.
“Yes, Lieutenant, you do,” Lunsford said. “That’s why we have junior lieutenants, to relieve their senior officers of dealing with petty administrative problems. Maybe, if you behave between now and then, I will assign the duty to one of the other pilots when they get here. But for now, you’re it. Say ‘yes, sir.’ ”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said, chuckling, and then asked, “Even if we eat the rations they’re going to ship us?”
“I don’t want to eat them unless we have to,” Lunsford said. “But once rations like that are issued, they’re no longer accountable for. I thought they might be handy to pass out to our Congolese allies, but that would mean we’ll have to find our own chow. What do you think?”
“Well, I don’t mind eating lion,” Jack said. “Or, for that matter, monkey or gorilla, but I don’t know about the others.”
There was silence.
“You got ’em,” Lunsford said. “I thought Gimpy Peters’s eyes were going to come out of his head when you said ‘monkey or gorilla.’ ”
“If we’re in Stanleyville, there will be lots of first-class cooks looking for work,” Jack said. “Vegetables and fish and eggs and pork won’t be any problem, but we’re going to have to figure out some way of getting in beef.”
“That going to be expensive?”
“I don’t think so. Ninety percent of the Belgians are gone from Stanleyville, and there was a food system that supplied them that no longer has customers. Everything but beef was available in Stanleyville, and still should be—or at least enough to feed the Detachment. They grow beef around Costermansville, and same story: Belgians gone, and the farmers looking for customers.”
“The farmers weren’t Belgians?” Peters asked.
“I don’t know this for a fact, but I’d be pretty surprised if, after Mike Hoare’s mercenaries ran the Simbas out, that the number-one boys on the farms didn’t come out of the bush and go back to work, whether the boss was there or not. They make their living off the farms and ranches, too, and the number-one boys know as much about running the operation as the owners did.”
“Interesting,” Lunsford said.
“Don’t take any heavy bets that I’m right,” Jack said. “We’ll only know for sure when we get there. In Costermansville, if that’s where we wind up—Colonel Supo has his headquarters there—we can just take over a floor in the Hotel du Lac.”
“Nice place,” Lunsford said.
“You know it?” Jack asked, surprised.
“I met Pappy Hodges and Geoff Craig there when I was running around in the bush with the Simbas,” Lunsford said. “And what’s all this going to cost?”
“I think, not much. I know the people who run the hotel, so they won’t try to gouge us, and I think they’ll be glad for the business,” Jack said. “So what happens if we don’t need all the money Uncle is giving us?”