The Intel shrugged. “I like to think I do. Why?”
“Because I think I’d like to know a little bit more about her myself. I don’t suppose you could provide me with a… briefing on the subject, could you?”
“Why not, sir. Where do you want to start?”
Vice Admiral Elliot “Eddie Mac” Macintyre hesitated for a long moment, then said, “What’s her favorite color?”
Christine Rendino looked away to hide her grin. “Green. She really likes green a lot.”
Conclusions
Crouching on the dusty floor of the long-abandoned shack, the Union Special Forces trooper peered through a gap between the warped boards nailed over the door.
He wore no uniform this day. Instead he was barefoot and clad in ragged civilian shirt and shorts. It had been carefully explained to him that this was a most secret and critical mission and that no one outside of himself and the military high command at Mamba Point must know of it.
He dug out the watch, one of the two objects he carried in his pockets, to check the time. They should be coming soon. The trooper returned to his vigil.
Outside, the crumbling macadam roadway was empty. Set midway between Monrovia and the airport, the hut was too far outside the city proper to see the passage of many foot travelers, and motor vehicles were now almost unknown. Only the government had any fuel left at all, and little enough of that.
Accordingly, when the trooper heard the sound of automobiles approaching, he knew it must be his target. Squinting out into the morning brightness, he watched as the small motorcade passed, first the Army Land Rover escort and then the battered Mercedes sedan. As the latter swept by, he caught the silhouette of the lone passenger in its rear seat. Yes! Target positively identified. All was going as planned.
As the little convoy proceeded toward the city, the trooper dug his hands into the small pile of earth and crumbling clay brick beside the hut door frame. After only a moment, he unearthed the coils of wire he had been told would be there. He removed the second object from his pocket, an electric hand detonator, and began connecting the wires to its terminals.
Another Special Forces team had preplanted the command detonated antitank mine in the roadway late the previous night, running the concealed detonator leads back to this firing point in the shack. The trooper’s task would be to explode the mine at the designated time, on the motorcade’s return run from Monrovia to the airport. The young soldier did not know why the U.N. representative was to be assassinated. However, Premier General Belewa had ordered that it be done, and that was enough.
As the small convoy made its way through the streets of the Union capital, Vavra Bey noted the changes since she had last been there, the growing disrepair, the uncompleted projects, the devitalization. The streets and markets were, for the most part, empty and left to the accumulating trash. And the few people abroad moved with a sullen lassitude instead of the burgeoning pride they had once carried.
The citizens of the Union might not be beaten, but they were rapidly forgetting what it was they had been trying to win. The U.N. representative could sense it. The stillness upon the city was a pause, like a man hesitating, wondering what he should do next.
The Mamba Point Hotel, once the tall, white citadel of Belewa’s government, had been converted into a fire-scarred ruin, every window in the structure shattered and the upper floors burned out from a cruise missile hit. A missile Bey had claimed the responsibility for.
She was alone here, amid a people who had no reason to have any great love for her. And yet, for what she hoped to accomplish, she’d had to come by herself.
The elevators had all been knocked out, and the climb to General Belewa’s office was a long and slow one. Maintaining his base of operations in the battered hotel had to be a monumental inconvenience, but perhaps also a last act of defiance. Either that or perhaps the man simply didn’t give a damn any more.
Bey’s silent escort ushered her through the door into Belewa’s office.
She observed that change had come to General Belewa as well. Somewhere during the past few months he had made the transition from “young” man to “no longer young” man. His closely trimmed hair was hazed with gray now, and the seams in his face had deepened, defining with greater clarity the bone beneath the flesh. The brightness and intensity still lingered in his eyes, but a fever heat burned behind them now.
He looked up as she entered, not rising, making no gesture of officiousness or formality. “What do you want?” he asked simply.
It was good. This was how she wished it to be, as well.
“It is time we talked, you and I,” she replied, crossing to one of the chairs before the General’s desk. “Not negotiate, but talk.” Uninvited, she sat down and met his gaze.
Belewa suppressed a short, harsh bark of laughter. “About what? You’ve won. We’ve lost. What is there left to talk about?”
“No one wins at war, General,” Bey replied levelly. “At best, one only prevents things from getting worse. It is true, we have no more reason to speak of Guinea. That issue is resolved. But we need to speak of the Union and its people and what befalls them next.”
“There is little to speak of there as well,” Belewa retorted. “Hell returns, Madam Representative. Very likely, we collapse back into the chaos and mindless savagery we arose from. No, the United Nations need not concern itself about the Union much longer. As it was with Liberia and Sierra Leone, we’ll soon be eating ourselves alive and you will be able to safely forget about us once again.”
Bey lifted an eyebrow. “And this is what you want, Obe Belewa?”
“What I want?” Belewa stared in disbelief at the representative. “What I want?” The big African straightened and rose from his chair. Lifting both fists, he crashed them down on the desktop. “What I wanted was to end it all. I wanted to end all the suffering! All the starvation! All the killing and repression and brutality. Couldn’t you see that! Couldn’t any of you see that all I wanted was to end the madness that has infected this land for far too long?”
“Yes, General, some of us could see that.”
“Then why couldn’t you let me finish the job?” Belewa turned away, staring out of the glassless balcony doors toward the sea beyond. “Why couldn’t you let me put things in order here? For decades you ignored this corner of the world, letting it go to the devil. Why pay attention now, just because someone is trying to put things right?”
“Because the day of empires and empire builders is past, General,” Vavra Bey replied quietly. “As is the concept of ‘the end justifies the means.’ No one argues with your goals. But the precedents that would be set by their achievement would have been too high a price to pay. Conquest can no longer be permitted by the world community, not even with the best of intentions.”
“Then how else am I supposed to do the job? Tell me that.” Belewa spun back from the windows. “I’m a soldier! I have a soldier’s skills and I know how to use a soldier’s tools! What other options do I have?”
The U.N. representative nodded slowly. “You are a soldier, a brave and able one. But if you wish to reach these high goals you have set, you must undertake a battle far more challenging than any you have ever before dreamed of.”
Vavra Bey did not speak as a diplomat now, but as a grandmother, that wisdom being more appropriate and stronger for this moment. “You must learn how to make war in another way, General. A slower and more difficult way. You must learn how to invade with ideas and how to conquer by example.