Robert Stone - Bay of Souls

"I beg your pardon," the lobbyist said. "He wears little pointed shoes. I sat next to him on the subway. They curl up at the ends. He's a Muslim terrorist. His opponent is a God-fearing yokel, un hombre muy formal. This is the war on terror."

The American, a God-fearing yokel by profession, laughed agreeably. Lara, smiling, took a chair to wait for Triptelemos and tried to listen to other conversations. Men spoke in English, Spanish, French.

She saw some members of a scholarly organization that had flourished in the Reagan era. They were a remnant now, but once they'd had money and power to spare, and Lara, following her ex-husband's lead, had gone to work for them, attached herself after leaving the great Desmond Jenkins and the service of Soviet disinformation. By then, no one cared who had killed Hammarskjöld, that Mobutu dined on human flesh. South Africa was giving way, the truncheon falling from the Boer's ham hand. There was a slaughter of the Eritreans; Cuban soldiers brought AIDS home with their Orders of the Red Banner. Islam appeared, rampant.

She and her husband ended up assigned to a catchall outfit, run by fanatics, increasingly short on money and power, increasingly lawless. It had been a mistake; they had been badly handled by the French, who had no use for them and passed them to the Americans, by which time the Cold War in Africa had shrunk to a few plague spots of starvation and murder, marginal in the world's eye. But it was all she had been able to promote from the free world end of the great blighted battlefield of Phantom World War Three.

For his friends, the Haitian American read archly from the translated newsletter of a right-wing racial nationalist on a colonial island who reportedly had been receiving funds from every major intelligence agency in the world.

"It's called 'Le Message du Soleil," the young man explained, and read on:

"'The African sun alone was the quickener of the civilized instinct. From Africa, it spread to the Fertile Crescent. But, hélas, not before it attracted the attention of cold pale dwarfs, a stunted race, mean of size and frigid of heart. Cunning and cruel. I refer to those known to the world as Caucasoids, otherwise as blancs. The white race, enfin!

"Present company excepted," the young Haitian paused to say.

"Wait a minute," one of the Americans said. "This is our guy?"

"Big tent, Arthur. Many mansions." The young man looked at them for leave to read on.

"'Yet the sun alone,'" he continued, "'was font and symbol of vitality. Thus, in an outburst of energy, one leader of the whites, perhaps the most gifted, took as his sign a dim stick figure of the sun. For what was the cross, my friends, if not the sun? And in his hands twisted it to its true likeness, to invoke the bright bounty of the great star itself.'

"He means the swastika," the dapper young man added helpfully.

"Yes, I caught that," the Cuban said.

The Haitian kid cleared his throat.

"'Rousing his crippled race to demoniac energy in its name. This leader so wickedly great, one — all — must admire him. Even as one recognizes him as the foe to emulate. So one day, as the trumpet notes sounded for Siegfried, the drums shall proclaim a leader for the sons and daughters of the great sun, the children of Amon Ra. Though I shall not be here to see it, in my soul's vision I see it now!'"

"My word!" said the American.

"That's just the way he sees it, Arthur. He's a good man."

" Adiós and farewell!"

Lara recognized the voice she had been dreading. He was an Argentine former military officer named Marcial Pérez, who liked to call himself Triptelemos.

"May our affairs prosper." He went to stand at the door and sent them off with abrazos. Not everyone who braced for an abrazo received one.

Once there had been a great secret coming and going, people leaving by separate doors without formality. But now the men from Triptelemos's meeting ambled casually past the butler to wait for their drivers. Perhaps the organization had stopped trying to conceal its influence and was trying to magnify it. Heretofore money had been collected in secret, but that might change, Lara thought.

When no one but Lara and Triptelemos remained, he approached, half bowed and kissed her hand.

"Did you see them admire you on their way out?" he asked her. "They thought, Who is this mysterious beauty?"

Lara laughed. "I could have told them, one of many. Just another mysterious beauty on the big estancia. "

Triptelemos ordered tea and they adjourned to a small parlor to have it; English tea, Belgian waffle cookies.

"I always imagined 'waffle' was an American word," he told her. He repeated it, waddling his jowls. "Waffle. Invented in Pittsburgh when a foreman spills his lunch on the factory's iron floor."

When she did not respond he said, "So sorry about your brother. Everyone expected you to go down for the funeral."

"I couldn't," she said. "I mourn him, believe me. But the place I teach, it would have been difficult getting someone to fill in. And I'm new. I mean, it was impossible, believe it or not."

"I believe it," Pérez Triptelemos said. Triptelemos was a name he had acquired on acid many years before, although he looked not at all the type. He claimed he'd been given the LSD by Arthur Koestler, who had known Timothy Leary. She thought he might have got it in Buenos Aires from a CIA collaborator with the dirty war. His play name had something to do with spreading grain, fighting communism. An acid vision. He believed in some variety of neofascist revolution, and Lara had found herself one of his mysterious beauties.

"We expected after your brother's death that there would be something for us."

"You know, I guess, we're selling the hotel? Roger is dealing with my brother's collection of island art. I'll be going down to help with that."

"We wondered," the officer said. "What about the rest? We have to pay the Colombians."

Lara understood that the hotel organization had connected itself with one of the right-wing Colombian militias. Her brother had worked with them. They had used the hotel and the island in their operations, although Lara made it her business to know as little as possible about it.

"Roger's running things now," she told Colonel Trip.

"Roger? Oh yes, Roger." He seemed to laugh good-naturedly. "Roger." As though he were taking satisfaction in his benign tolerance for all mankind.

"John-Paul trusted him."

"Therefore we do the same. There's a ceremony of commemoration, is there not? Perhaps I'll attend."

She stood amazed, afraid she must have gone pale. That he would be on the island! The thought petrified her.

He patted her hand. "Only in spirit. I wouldn't dream of intruding on those rituals."

"You've been kind to us," Lara said.

"Our work… this part of it is coming to an end. But there will be other strategies and other battles. Compañeros fight on in Colombia. With your brother gone, we vouchsafe our trust to you and the Colombian brotherhoods."

"You know, Triptelemos, I've left the work. We're selling."

"Yes, I know." He went in his pocket and took out a jewelry box. When he opened it, she saw the emerald and took it out.

"Señor!" She looked at him, and with the look mustered all the supine female deference of which her mind and body were capable. Her soul was in reserve.

"It's African," she said. "It has the oil." She ogled it until her eyes watered. "Oh, señor!" She leaned forward and they kissed with both cheeks.

"Now you have to tell me," he said to her. "You must be truthful. Did Fidel give one to you?"

She only smiled.

He lowered his eyes. "I'm indiscreet."

He began to talk about the situation on St. Trinity. Even without her assistance he seemed well informed.