Gordon Kent - Peacemaker

“Yes, yes, yes—!” Lascelles waved the list. “I don’t do these things myself .” He sounded whiny, at the same time arrogant. I give it to some underling , he meant. Arms dealing was a detail, he meant. “You will get your weapons.”

“Soon, it has to be soon, or no deal. To go to Africa , you know—”

Lascelles’s eyes looked shrewd. Like a child saying a naughty word, he said, “One of your centers in the Serbian zone got knocked over, I heard, is that what I heard?” His eyes flicked over Zulu’s face and hands again. “You were there?”

Zulu made a face. “A little one, nothing.” It definitely had been more than nothing, but he wouldn’t admit it to this old spider; it had outraged him, some bunch of shitkickers from UNPROFOR driving him out of one of his own places. Forcing him to jump through a fucking window with some American shithead shooting at him! The amphetamines pushed his anger up and he almost let it show, but he brought himself down, stayed quiet. Pretended to deal with it. “Pustarla, big deal—! The fucking UN!” He flexed his right knee and felt the pain of the long gash he had got, jumping through that window.

“Internationalism!” Lascelles cried. “You see? You see? It’s all part of their plan! ”

Zulu didn’t in fact see. He didn’t care a dog’s fart about internationalism. He believed that Greater Serbia could exist in and of itself, separate from the world, above the world. When they had exterminated the Muslims, when the Croats were subdued, when Greater Serbia was a clean and pure state, then they would close their borders and be themselves. To hell with the UN and the US, was his view. To hell with Europe. And fuck France. But, just now, he needed Lascelles.

“What do I have to do in Africa?” Zulu said.

“For now, go back to Serbia and select good men. Say two companies. Elite. Then I will need to send you down there to start things, and if it really explodes, I will need you and your men there perhaps for a month. White troops go through Africans like a hot knife.”

“Money?” Zulu said shrewdly. “White men get good money to fight in Africa.”

Lascelles’s furrows folded in on themselves a little, as if he were pulling into himself. This was his version of a smile. “France will be fair.”

He meant that he would be fair, but he thought of himself as France.

He put his head back, closed his eyes. The meeting was over.

Zulu waited a few seconds to show that he couldn’t be dismissed like a flunkey, but Lascelles ignored him, and he got up and put on his sunglasses and went out to the terrace. As soon as he got out there, the air was sweeter. The odd smell inside was Lascelles.

Zulu went down the terrace, thinking about his war and the loss of the place in Pustarla. Him , the commander, being forced to go out a window and run through the snow like a naked girl. Some goddamned American shooting at him—he’d heard the voice, knew that accent all too well. Rage surged up again and he let it go this time. Rage was good for him, he believed, a rush like a drug. He could do a lot on rage. Africa . For a little while, maybe, while things were quiet back home, until the “peace accord” fell apart. But he had to stay focused . Not get sidetracked by Lascelles’s adventures in Africa. A means to an end. There was no rage for him in Africa. The American who forced him out that window . Yes, he felt rage about that. Greater Serbia . Yes, there was rage. The fucking Muslims, the goddam Croats. Lice. Vermin. Things . Rage. Rage.

The Med, aboard USS Jefferson.

Alan had Ensign Baronik working on the squadron IOs brief, the intel specialists prepping the visuals, and his senior chief cruising the ASW spaces in case there was any chance of running anything against a real target. He felt a pang of envy for the guys who would do it if he found anything. Alan had been a pretty good back seat not so long ago, and he’d run a line on a Russian sub that had almost got his S-3B goosed with the periscope when it had surfaced. Great days. Great for a young man, anyway. Now, he was a senior lieutenant, about to become an acting CAG AI, in—he checked his watch—six hours and thirty-nine minutes.

Because LCDR Suter was leaving.

Leaving his IO’s post, leaving the ship, leaving the Navy. To take “something better,” he’d said with that sneer-smile he used, as if the something better was really better, and none of you merely mortal shmucks would understand how much better. Resigning usually took six months to a year.

Alan’s guess was that Suter had had a greatly accelerated resignation because somebody out there, somebody with real clout, wanted him enough to twist arms.

The raid on the torture center in the Serbian zone seemed like a distant memory now, except for flashes of the man he had shot and of that shadow on the wall—the witch. Or gargoyle. Or whatever that had been. And the name Zulu , which had been on the photograph and which the men who had been tortured there had spoken with fear.

He had got some medals out of it, for what that was worth—one from the Italians that said Coraggio e onore , and a letter from the Canadians, commending him for “extraordinary efforts in intelligence support and acquisition.” The Kenyans had been downright embarrassing (“glorious achievements to enhance our medical work under the banner of the United Nations”).

Had he done well? Had it meant anything, that dawn raid? Men had died; he had killed—what had it accomplished? They had saved two men from more torture, he supposed. One of the victims they’d brought out had had a fractured sinus, wa Danio had said, a broken nose and broken teeth, three broken ribs where they had kicked the water out of him. One had died. One of the bodies had had both eyelids cut away. And for what? Nobody seemed to know. For being young and Muslim. When he thought of the man who had had his eyelids cut off, Alan thought, How can a human being do that? and then he felt a revulsion and anger that gave the Bosnian raid a bad taste.

He had tried to write to a friend who was a Navy cop, Mike Dukas, about it. What kind of people do these things? Maybe a cop would understand. Mike, it’s you guys they need there, not me. They need law . Was that what peacekeeping was?

Now, back on the boat, Alan was going down the list of classified pubs for which Suter was responsible, because Suter was leaving and had to sign off on the classified pubs in his care. The list had already been done and checked by Suter himself, but Alan knew that Suter would screw him somehow if he could. So on and on he went, Alan sinking lower and lower in his chair, until, as he had feared, he found two titles that had been checked off by Suter but that in fact couldn’t be found. Alan wrote a memo and put it in the folder, and then he indicated the missing two as unaccounted for on Suter’s sign-over receipt, initialed the two, signed “with exceptions as noted,” and sent the pages off to Suter. Another stack arrived shortly after.

Suter put his head in at 1717. “I’m out of here in a half-hour.”

Alan went on signing.

“I hear you found two docs missing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They were there this morning when I did them.”

“They’re not there now.”

“You know they’ll turn up.”

“Yep.” He went on signing. “I’m sure that right now they’re under somebody’s rack, and when we do a final fore-and-aft sweep before hitting the beach, they’ll come out on the end of a broom and we’ll get them back.” Scrawl, flap.

“Why not just sign off for them now, then?”