Rogue's March Read Free

he understand what that meant—for the President, for him, for the Americans?
    â€œYeah, I get the message, friend,” he drawled in a vulgar voice calculated to discourage whispered intimacies, whether from bored embassy wives or Third World diplomats looking for the American bagman. “Loud and clear, like the last time or whenever it was, but it’s not my problem. You’ve got the wrong number. Try the police.” He turned, pushing his arm through his jacket, looking out through the window at the night watchman’s fire under the avocado tree.
    â€œ Mais non, non ,” the whispered voice came back, very shocked. “ C’est M’sieur Reddish ?”
    â€œThat’s right, Reddish. Like last time. So what? Who the hell’s this?”
    His caller renewed his warning: the army was preparing to overthrow the President. Reddish still couldn’t place the voice. There were few in positions of power whose voice he wouldn’t have recognized. For nearly four years their history had been his history, their lives grown over his own like a kind of scrofula, a canker, separating him from his own past.
    â€œ C’est votre ami , your old friend,” the voice continued in an agonized whisper. “ Vous me connaissez très bien—très, très bien .”
    For an instant, the voice was fleetingly familiar, but Reddish was impatient: “You’ve got the wrong man, friend. Sorry. Why don’t you try the internal security directorate. Maybe they can help you.” He looked across the room. Atop the locked liquor cabinet, the houseboy had set out the ice bucket, soda siphon, and a single glass on the silver tray, but no bottle.
    â€œ Mais non, non ,” the voice pleaded. “ C’est à vous, mon ami! It’s up to you, the Americans! The paratroopers have guns, Russian guns, brought in from across the river! I tell you it’s true. The paras and their mercenaries too! The first trucks have gone out. Tomorrow they’ll send more. It’s up to you, you the Americans! Vous êtes notre espérance, notre conscience! Vous, mon ami! Il faut donner toute votre puissance au president ! We want no more rebellions, no more anarchy!”
    The emotion of the appeal was suddenly as familiar as the voice, and for the first time a face swam into focus—the gold-rimmed spectacles, the dark face, the damp, embarrassed toffee-colored eyes.
    â€œLook,” Reddish said, “if you’ve got something to say to me, maybe we’d better meet someplace.”
    â€œThere’s no time. They’re watching me. They know, you see. C’est à vous, mon ami. ”
    Somewhere off in the background a goat cried out, two women were shouting in Lingala, but then a truck engine revved up, drowning out everything else. The connection was broken.
    Reddish stood with the dead phone in his hand, remembering too late his caller’s name. He was Mr. Banda, an obscure little civil servant who worked in a dusty little office in customs clearing incoming shipments. Reddish had once done him a favor, a small thing, of little consequence at the time, but one the older man had never forgotten.
    During the Simba rebellions, Banda had been assigned to a provincial town in the north, where he’d been captured, imprisoned, and sentenced to death by the rebels. The death sentence hadn’t been carried out by the time the town had been liberated by government troops. The prison had been blown to rubble by army mortars, but Banda had escaped, bloody yet alive. The army was systematically killing the wounded in the small rural hospital, and Banda had taken refuge in the deserted UN compound, where he was discovered by the team of UN doctors and nurses who reoccupied the clinic. By then his name had appeared on the army death list as a rebel collaborator.
    When Reddish visited the town following the Simba retreat, a dossier had been assembled on