Warren Murphy: Dangerous Games

That this last name had a solid basis in fact was reinforced for Mullin when he walked into Mkom-bu's office in a small building hidden inside the jungle, just across the Zambia border. The entire desk top in front of Mkombu was covered with food, and the food was covered with flies. This did not discourage Mkombu, who ate with both hands, shovelling food into his face and swallowing any of it that did not manage to drop onto his bare chest. Flies and all.

Mkombu waved a grease-covered hand at Mullin as he entered the office. In the same motion, he picked up a bottle of wine, took a long swallow directly from the bottle, then offered the bottle to the Briton.

"No, thank you, sir," Mullin said politely, controlling his face tightly so that the revulsion he felt did not show on his face.

"Well, then, eat something, Jackie. You know I hate to eat alone."

"You seem to have been doing a pretty good job of it," Mullin said. Mkombu glared at him and Mullin reached out and picked up a piece of chicken between right thumb and forefinger. With luck, he could nurse this chicken lump throughout the entire meeting and then go back to his own cottage where he kept a supply of American canned foods, which was all he ever ate in the jungle.

Mkombu smiled when he saw Mullin pick up the chicken, but he kept staring until the Englishman took a small bite and began, reluctantly, to chew. Mkombu nodded.

"You know, Jackie, if you keep killing my men, I'm not going to have any left to fight my war with."

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Mullin sat in a chair facing the desk and crossed his legs. He was not a large man, standing only five-foot-seven and weighing 150 pounds, but men did not often underestimate him twice.

"If they keep challenging my authority, they'll keep getting killed. It keeps the rest of them in line."

"Can't you just hit them on the head or something? That'll get their attention. Must you kill them?" Mkombu wiped his greasy hands on the front of his dashiki shirt. Then, as an afterthought, he began picking the food from his sparse brilloed chest hair and popping pieces of the debris into his mouth. Mullin looked away, through the window, out toward the clearing that was the main jumping-off point for Mkombu's People's Democratic Army of Revolutionary Liberation.

"They don't understand hits on the head," Mullin said. "They understand getting killed. If I can't do that, Jim Bob, one day they'll run off and leave you and we'll be without an army."

"But the man you killed was better than any other three men I had."

Mullin sighed, remembering how easy it had been to kill the six-foot-six, 260-pound sergeant. Mullin had removed his .45 automatic, his pilot's cap, and his black metal-framed glasses. As he reached over to place his glasses carefully on the ground atop his hat, the big man's eyes had followed him, and Mullin had kicked out with his left foot and with the hard heel of his boot stove in the other man's Adam's apple. The fight was over before it had begun. To make sure, when the man dropped, Mullin had smashed in the man's temple with the steel-tipped toes of his high regimental boots.

"If he was better than any other three men, we are in deep trouble, Jim Bob. He was slow and stupid. A soldier cannot be a soldier without a brain. The size

12

of the army doesn't win a war. Discipline, and at least enough brains to follow orders, do."

Mkombu nodded. He had finished policing his chest and again wiped his hands on his shirt. "You are right, of course, which is why I am paying you so generously to be my chief of staff."

He smiled and Muffin smiled back. Underpaying me, Muffin thought, but he was satisfied that his time would come. Patience was always rewarded.

Mkombu rose from behind his desk and said, "Well, stop killing everybody for a while." And then, as if to halt any further discussion, he said quickly, "To the business at hand."

"Which is?"

Mkombu clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward slightly at the waist. "The Olympic Games," he said.

"What event are you entering?" Muffin asked. "International pie-eating?"

Mkombu stood up straight behind the desk. He was only two inches taller than Muffin but outweighed him by more than a hundred pounds. His shirt was covered with food stains, and a glob of grease glistened in his graying black beard. He smiled and Muffin saw gold and silver glistening inside the pink cavern of his mouth.

"If I did not know better, Jackie, I would think you don't like me," Mkombu said.

It was a direct challenge and Muffin backed off, content that the day would come when he would make his move, but it would not be just yet.

"Just joking, Jim Bob," he said.

"Fine. You joke all you want. Why don't you eat that chicken in your hand?"

He watched as Muffin brought it to his mouth and took another reluctant bite.

"All right," Mkombu said. "Now the Olympics."

"What about them?"

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"The athletes from South Africa and Rhodesia may not be permitted to compete."

"So what," Mullin said with a shrug.

"It seems that might make both countries angry."

"Correct," Mullin said. "How does it concern us?"

"We are going to make what happened at Munich in 1972 seem like a picnic." He looked up and Mullin nodded. The Englishman knew the game. Mkombu would make short statements and Mullin would have to prod him with hows and whys and what-fors until the story was completely out. It fed Mkombu's ego to have the Britisher continually ask for clarification of his statements.

"How?" Mullin said.

"We are going to kill the athletes of one of the competing countries and place the blame on some white terrorist group from Southern Africa."

Mullin took off bis glasses and inspected them in the light. He could play games too. He slowly replaced the glasses on the bridge of his nose and asked, "What for?"

"Once the deed is done in the name of the Southern African Somebodies for Something, the world will crack down on South Africa and Rhodesia. It will open the door for us."

"It didn't seem to work that way with the Palestinians. Everybody seems to have forgotten that they killed children at Munich. Why should they get upset about South Africa or Rhodesia?"

"Because South Africa and Rhodesia are anti-Communist," Mkombu said. "That guarantees that world opinion against them will be vicious and unforgiving. The Palestinians did not have that handicap."

Mullin nodded. "Might work," he said. "How many athletes will we be killing?"

"From this one country, every single one. All of them," Mkombu answered with obvious pleasure.

"And how will we accomplish this?"

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"That, my dear Jack, is what I pay you so handsomely for. Figure it out. Naturally, we will be issuing threats in advance so we can begin turning public opinion against the white regimes. The mass murder will be the final touch."

"A minimum force, of course," Mullin said.

"Of course. The fewer people who know about it or are involved in it, the better." He sat back down again. Almost without directing it, his hand moved toward a piece of beef. A fly moved away as his hand closed in.

"One problem," Mullin said. "Your Russian friends. How are they going to like your messing up their Olympics?"

"If you do your job well, they will never know it was us," Mkombu said.

"All right," Mullin said. He stood and tossed the piece of chicken with the two small nips taken out of it back onto the desk. Mkombu, he was sure, would eat it later. Waste not, want not. He started to the door.

"You forgot something," Mkombu said as Mul-lin's hand turned the door knob.

"Yes?"

"Don't you want to know the country whose athletes we will be killing?"

"It's not really important, Jim Bob, but go ahead. What country?"

"A major power," Mkombu said.