“So,” Cangele said, then. “What have you to comment?”
Assele-Ndaki hesitated another moment.
“Loyal and good men may make mistakes they regret, Mr. President,” he said. “As one who believes in the possibility of atonement, I would prefer such individuals be granted a chance to rectify their mistakes, rather than have their shame compounded by scandal and punishment. And I am convinced most would of them look on it with humble appreciation.”
“And yet there is a hesitant note in your voice.”
Assele-Ndaki’s throat was dry and tight. He drank from the glass of water on the table beside him.
“Only because I would respectfully suggest that some might shy away from the opportunity to make amends out of self preservation,” he said, and glanced at the photograph under Cangele’s fingertips. “My dear friend Macie Nze was surely innocent of wrongdoing. But it could be that he was under strong persuasion to compromise his integrity, commit an indiscretion that would have weighed on his conscience… and was tortured and killed for his refusal. It gives me fear that the same could happen to the guilty who wish to redeem themselves. Or worse yet, to the people they love. These are men with families.”
President Cangele was quiet, his smooth features thoughtful. He kept his gaze on Assele-Ndaki a while longer, and then let his eyes slowly move over the faces of the conclaved parliamentarians.
“No one in this room today has seen me. No one in this room has heard me,” he said. “None of you… are we agreed?”
Heads were nodding around the table. Assele-Ndaki’s was no exception.
Cangele smiled his ready, hard smile.
“I know what it is to be a family man. A husband. A father. And to my own bemusement, a recent grandfather,” he said. “It is with my growing brood in mind that the commitment I’ve made toward a democratic future for our nation is constantly renewed. It is for them I wish to see Gabon become a model of social and governmental reform on our continent… and in doing so, someday make dinosaurs of autocrats like myself and insatiable bought-out scoundrels such as you gentlemen.” He paused, the smile gradually dwindling from the corners inward. The fingers of his right hand tapped the photograph of Macie Nze, his left fist thumping his chest over the wax cloth shirt. “Still, I am African. My blood and heritage is African. I am therefore, by nature, an unromantic dreamer. The reality is that my plans for our republic have come under attack from forces of subversion and terror. And the attack must be repulsed. My pledge here is this: Stand with me now, as one, and you will have my fullest protection. Any past weaknesses you have shown will be excused. But let a single man in this room stand against me, continue his faithlessness, and you will see the offer pulled back from over you, leaving your heads open to whatever may fall on them — again as one. All of you will be reminded that I, too, know how to be terrible and threatening. Remember who I am, good sirs. Remember my African blood.”
A hush fell over the parlor. Though he’d continued to address the entire group as he concluded, the president’s eyes had momentarily snapped back to Assele-Ndaki. Now he shifted them to the death photograph of Macie Nze, slid it away from himself, calmly leaned back in his chair, and folded his hands over the great mound of his stomach.
The silence stretched out a while longer. His face mild, Cangele studied the section of tabletop he had cleared of the photograph.
Assele-Ndaki drank from his glass, a long swallow. He knew the question had been left for him to ask.
“How will our unity be announced?” Despite the water moistening his throat, his voice seemed to be issuing from the smallest pinhole.
Cangele smiled, as much to himself as to the others in the room. Quiet and impassive since Assele-Ndaki’s arrival, one of the presidential aides turned toward the assemblyman and regarded him with sudden interest, as if having become aware of his presence for the first time.
“We have arranged for an article to appear in the morning paper,” he said.
Pete Nimec and Vince Scull waited under the hot yellow sun in the market of Le Grand Village, holding pain beurre they had bought on their way into the plaza, the pan fried, heavily buttered breads greasy in their wax-paper wraps. There were throngs of people around them. Hawkers, shoppers, beggars. Many of the latter were children with the filmy stares of oncho—a parasitic river blindness — who squatted at the periphery of the square. In a wildlife dealer’s stall some yards to the right, a bright green parrot fluttered on its perch in a crude screen cage atop a display table fashioned of two wooden barrels that had been bound together with a thick hemp rope. Fluffs of emerald down clung to the cage’s rusty metal bars like dandelion seeds. The newspapers lining the bottom of the cage were covered with a thick dry encrustation of droppings and cracked nut shells. A second parrot lay unmoving in the layer of waste, dead or close to dead. In a bloody canvas sack hanging from a post above the cage, an unseen creature released a shrill animal cry as it thrashed repeatedly against the cloth in a vain struggle to free itself.
Nimec turned from the stall, swallowing a bite of his fry bread without appetite. It was like he’d hurled the food down into a ditch. The happy traveler.
He desperately missed Annie and the kids.
He looked over Scull’s shoulder toward the north end of the outdoor market and spotted Steve DeMarco and Andy Wade approaching through a crowded aisle. They were a conspicuous pair. Both men had on pastel short-sleeved shirts, while the Gabonese strongly preferred colorful prints… or simple undyed kaftans in the case of the population’s devout Muslims. DeMarco’s whiteness and Wade’s blackness made them even easier standouts. Whites in this country were almost always foreigners — expats or short-term visitors — and lived in a sort of proximate separation with the nationals. Stranger that he was here, Nimec’s study of his mission briefs, and his first-hand impressions of the place, pointed toward very little true social mingling between people of different races. They shared the same streets, stayed at the same hotels, and ate at the same restaurants in self-segregated clusters. What interactions they had seemed driven mainly by commerce and politics.
The relaxed companionability of the two Sword ops as they walked together would leave observers with scant doubt they were of another place and culture.
Scull had noticed Nimec looking past him.
“See anybody?” he said.
“Yeah,” Nimec said. “DeMarco and Wade.”
Scull grunted and bit into his fry bread. He was sweating profusely, his sparse hair pasted to his head, dark rings of moisture staining the underarms of his shirt.
“Ackerman’s on his way in, too,” he said. “Coming from behind you.”
Nimec gave him a nod. That accounted for everybody except Conners, who was decoying.
He and Scull waited in the pressing afternoon heat and humidity. After a few moments the men reached them.
They exchanged nods.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Scull said.
DeMarco looked briefly at him, then turned to Nimec.
“You think we ought to take a walk?” he said.
Nimec jerked his head slightly to indicate the surrounding crush of market buyers.
“I like it where we are,” he said. “Best place to be right now.”
DeMarco nodded his understanding. A congested area offered its own type of cover — the people in circulation around them would present a constant and changing impediment to an observer’s line of sight.