ever, is he?â Michaux asked, amused, talking of the President. âTerrified of strikes, foreign guns, Russians, Cubans, and God knows what else. Students now, eh? Is that why he brought back that scoundrel Jean-Bernard de Vaux? Someone told me heâs the Presidentâs bodyguard. Doesnât trust the Americans now, just his old Belgian mercenaries.â
Michaux knew Reddish as the Presidentâs shadow during the rebellions, accompanying him on the C-130 flights about the interior. Even during the most bitter days, when the nation seemed merely so much carrion for the UN and the cold war jackals, Reddish had never adopted the bush jackets or safari suits worn by other junketing diplomats or UN civil servants, but always the same drab rumpled seersucker or tropical suits, the coat settled damply about his shoulders like a barmanâs jacket.
âNot the Presidentâs bodyguard, Colonel NâSikaâs, the new commander of the para brigade. Where did you know de Vaux?â
âJean-Bernard de Vaux? Here,â Michaux said. âI know him well. An ugly little guttersnipe, straight from the Antwerp slumsâa mongrel, thatâs what. Clever though; everyone knows that. So now heâs with the para brigade. Bodyguard, you say?â
âAide and equerry to Colonel NâSika, the commander.â
âNâSika?â Michaux frowned suddenly, memory gone. âDonât know him. Whereâs he from?â
âThe north. Equateur.â
Michaux brightened. âThen I wouldnât,â he declared, relieved. He was no longer physically active, a crippled old crab on the beach; memory was the tide that lifted him away. He drank from the whiskey Reddish had brought him from the capital, smiling. âNo, donât know him. Equateur, you say? No, too much jungle in the blood up there, like Maniemaâtoo dark, too savage.â He laughed.
He was almost seventy, his thatch of white hair crudely cut, the flesh of his face and neck scarred by the equatorial sun. He had lived in the bush for forty years, surviving fever, isolation, superstition, and disease, the murder and mayhem of the Simba and mercenary rebellions, and now the torpor of an exhausted countryside. The roads were worse now than forty years ago; he couldnât evacuate his palm nuts to the river or the railhead; the pressing plant, burned by the rebels, hadnât been reopened. After forty years, all he had for his labors were his crippling arthritis, a derelict palm oil plantation thirty kilometers to the south, and a middle-aged Batatela woman who kept house for him and whom he called his wife.
âThey say the President is in poor health,â Michaux continued, still eager for gossip from Kinshasa. âThey say thatâs why he hides himself away in the capitalâcancer of the throat, I heard. Paralyzed, they sayâeverything. Is that why he went to Brussels last month, because of this cancer?â
âHealth isnât one of his problems,â Reddish said, gazing out into the bright, windless African afternoon.
âBut everything else is, eh? The army, the parliament, the cabinet, the Russians, now the students. Is that why he reorganized the paras, with his new colonel in charge? They say the regular army threatened to mutiny in the south.â
âA little misunderstanding, thatâs all.â
âThe army and the students fought in the streets, but the national radio tells us nothing. Is that a misunderstanding too?â
âProbably. How well did you know de Vaux?â Reddish persisted, his curiosity stirred. He collected the odd anomalous fact as other men collect pocket pieces, pipes, or books. He knew de Vaux well enough to recognize that some of his information was false.
âWell enough. I knew him here. Why? Has he tried to hire himself out to the Americans? If he has, youâve got a brass sovereign. Tried to hire himself out to me once.
Learning to Kill: Stories