Authors: David DeBatto
“This is preposterous,” Ellis said. “This is blackmail.”
“You can call it what you want,” DeLuca said. “But here’s what’s going to happen. I keep secrets for a living, Ambassador,
and I’ll keep this one, because I know you have a wife and kids back home, and I don’t want to hurt them, but I will if I
have to. You’re going to resign. You’re going to say something about how it’s time for new blood to help the new government
get on its feet and that you need to step down. Say whatever you want to say, but do it today.”
“You can’t give me orders,” Ellis said.
“Yes I can,” DeLuca said. “See you at the briefing.”
They met again, half an hour later, sitting at a conference table with Ellis and with Captain McKinley from the
LBJ,
Robert Mohl, General Kissick representing the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Webster, Admiral Pulaski, Captain Long, Captain Gates,
Hanson Sedu-Sashah, General Rene LeClerc from the United Nations, Lionel Ayles-Kensey representing British interests, and
Colonel Suarez from the 27th Infantry, as well as with Phil LeDoux, who was conversing with LeClerc in French when Kissick
called the briefing to order. They asked DeLuca for his opinions on a variety of issues. IPAB? “Minimal influence,” DeLuca
said. “Some traction in the north, but mostly a small number of disorganized imams and dispersed terrorists struggling for
power within the organization.”
“Dadullahjid?”
“Windbag.”
“John Dari?”
“Someone we can and should work with,” DeLuca said. “The Robin Hood image is true. And it’s not just a myth he perpetuates.
He’s the real deal. A natural leader.”
“Paul Asabo?”
“Probably the single most unifying force in Liger,” DeLuca said. “He pulls together all religions, tribes, and political factions.
I think the likelihood that power will corrupt him is minimal.”
“Do you think he’s really going to hold general elections in six months?”
“Absolutely,” DeLuca said. “Just like Jerry Rawlings did in Ghana. I also predict Asabo will be elected in a landslide with
Dari as his running mate, but I’ve learned my lessons about predicting elections from living in the U.S.”
“What about the Ligerian People’s Liberation Front, and General Mfutho?”
“I saw about a hundred LPLF troops running down the road in their underwear,” DeLuca said. “I only know they were LPLF because
we found a big pile of uniforms up the road from where we saw them. Weapons, too. My sense is, what they’re saying on the
news is correct. These people just don’t want to fight anymore. Certainly not each other. They’re desperate for help, but
they’re also desperate for peace.”
“Recommendations?” Kissick asked.
“Can I give a personal opinion?” DeLuca said.
“Absolutely,” Kissick said. “We’re all just scrambling for purchase here. I want a brain dump, and we’ll sort it out later.”
“Brain dump it is, sir,” DeLuca said, having to chew the expression a while before spitting it out. “It’s my understanding
that in this circumstance, unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, Civil Affairs has been putting together a massive supply of men
and material to assist in the reconstruction of Liger, after Operation Liberty’s first phase was completed. We have food,
medicine, water, hospital equipment and CASHs, engineers and all that, close at hand and in place to suppress any possible
post-phase-one insurgencies. Do I have that approximately correct? The practical applications, if not the political interpretations?”
“You do,” Kissick said.
“Then my recommendation would be that we skip phase one and go straight to phase two,” DeLuca said. “A massive and immediate
projection of soft power. Both because they need it now, and because it’s a void that someone else is going to fill if we
wait. That was how IPAB had gained a foothold in the north to begin with, by assisting the people there on the local level.
They’re still there, and the void is bigger than ever, and they’re in the best position to fill it, unless we jump. I say
send in the Marines and the 27th immediately, and make sure they’re armed and trained to protect themselves and provide security,
but make sure they all know how to change diapers and build schools, too, because I believe we would be both welcomed and
respected if we did. It was not my sense that there’s a strong anti-U.S. or antiwhite sentiment in Liger. There’s not going
to be an insurgency, unless we start blowing stuff up. They just want help. But what do I know? I’m just a lowly spook.”
“We’ll take it under advisement,” Kissick said.
“The thought has merit,” Ayles-Kinsey said. Sedu-Sashah and LeClerc nodded in support. “I see it as a time when might makes
wrong. The Ligerians have seen how the West supports a regime with arms. If they see Asabo changing that arrangement and bringing
in food instead of guns, it would certainly shore up support for him. Particularly in the north, where the need is greatest.
I think…”
DeLuca listened, but he knew his contribution to the discussion was done.
Six hours later, the airlift began, Operation Manna, the White House had dubbed it. In the next twenty-four hours, over three
thousand relief sorties were flown by U.S. C-141s, C-130 Hercules, and C5 Galaxies, bringing in water pumps, water purification
units, solar cook stoves and windmills, construction materials and engineers, field kitchens and field hospitals, doctors
and medical personnel, along with all the TV crews and newspaper reporters they could muster, after the White House determined
they would use Operation Manna as an opportunity to tweak America’s image abroad. As the planes flew, the White House announced
its intention to release over $500 million in aid to West African countries, in addition to funds committed to rebuild Liger,
and dismissed $35 billion dollars in prior debts accrued by Liger and its neighbors. A White House spokesman said plans were
being made to hold a rock concert on the White House lawn to benefit the victims of the war.
Gabrielle Duquette had stayed in London, though she’d been invited to participate in the relief effort. One London newspaper
had called her a hypocrite for refusing to go, and said that when push came to shove and she was really needed, she wasn’t
willing to put her money where her mouth was.
Dan Sykes considered bringing flowers with him, but he knew she’d received enough flowers in her lifetime to fill a stadium.
When he knocked on the door to her hotel suite, after using a few CI techniques to discover the name she’d registered under,
he was surprised again to see her answer it. She was wearing a thick white bathrobe over flannel PJs. She didn’t have any
makeup on, and she had bed-head, but her smile was lovely. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” Sykes said. “Flying stateside, but I had a layover. I thought I’d check in.”
Sykes noticed Band-Aids on her feet.
“Blisters,” Duquette said. “I don’t think anybody was meant to walk twenty miles in Prada sandals. The problem is, if I go
out, somebody is bound to take a picture of my feet, and then everyone will want to know how I got them. Can I get you anything
from the minibar?” she asked.
“I never use the minibars,” Sykes said. “Too expensive.”
“It’s on me,” Duquette said.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“How’m I doing?” she said, sitting on the couch. “I guess I’m all right. Thanks for sending the helicopter to come get me.
And thanks for not being the person flying it, too.”
“I told you I’d get you home,” he said. “I was hoping to meet your son.”
“My nanny and my son Jonathan are flying in tomorrow,” Gabrielle said. “It’s been far too long since I’ve seen him. I feel
like I’m a terrible mother. But other than that. How are you?”
“Not a scratch,” Sykes said, holding out his arms to show her. “It got a little sketchy there for a while, but I think we
straightened it out. I was worried about you.”
“About me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes you see things, in a war, that you’re not meant to see. Or you do things. It can change you. Particularly
if you don’t have anybody to talk to about it. In my business, they train you to hold your emotions in, to get you through
and out the other side, but they never talk about what you’re supposed to feel afterward.”
“I’m an actress,” she told him. “We’re trained, too. Emotions on demand. Also to keep smiling, because you never know where
the cameras are.”
“Yeah,” Sykes said. “Well, there’s no cameras here. In the military, if you don’t have friends to talk to about it, you can
go crazy. And since the only people you can talk about it with are the people who’ve been through it with you, you stick together.
That’s why nobody talks about war, except with other veterans. Nobody else would ever understand.”
“Okay,” she said, looking at him. “I think I get it.”
“So anyway, I came by, in case you needed somebody to talk to. Because if you try to hold it in, it’s just going to hurt you
more.”
She looked at him for a second, and then her façade began to crack, and she began to cry, softly at first, but then she was
overwhelmed. Sykes sat next to her and held her, stroking her hair and doing what he could to comfort her. She cried for fifteen
minutes. It was the first time that Sykes had seen her lower her guard. She was silent for another fifteen minutes, her head
pressed against his chest, her eyes closed.
“You must be hungry after your flight,” she said at last, drying her eyes. “Why don’t you let me whip you up some waffles
and bacon, Canadian style?”
“Well,” he said. “I’m not really ready for waffles and bacon, just now.”
“I didn’t mean just now,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, not getting what she meant.
“Oh!” he said, getting what she meant.
She smiled at him.
“Dan,” she said, closing her enormous eyes and kissing him. She looked at him, their eyes three inches apart. He felt like
he was sitting in the front row at a multiplex before a full-screen closeup. “Turn off your phone,” she whispered. “You’re
going to be busy.”
MacKenzie made the arrangements with a sergeant named Rodriguez in the 14th Mortuary Services Battalion for the storage and
transportation of Stephen’s remains. Rodriguez was glad to assist, saying he’d expected to be busier than he was.
She could only learn, with Walter Ford’s help searching all the available computerized databases, the name of one of Stephen’s
distant cousins, a man named Roy who lived in Santa Cruz. The cousin hadn’t talked to Stephen in over ten years and hadn’t
a clue that Stephen had gone to Africa, or even that he’d ever entertained dreams of being a writer. Stephen’s parents were
both dead, Roy said, killed in a car crash when Stephen was sixteen. Stephen’s father had been a machinist, the cousin thought,
though he wasn’t sure, and not a military man. Stephen had gone to a junior college for a few years, Roy recalled, but beyond
that, the cousin had lost touch and couldn’t be of any further help. He said he didn’t want to have anything to do with funeral
arrangements and wouldn’t know who might. There was no next of kin. That’s all he had to say.
Ford also discovered that for a while, Stephen had attempted to maintain a Web site, where he’d posted his blogs and his thoughts,
but the Web site had gone down years earlier, and nothing of it remained. Stephen had sublet his apartment in Chicago to a
stranger he’d met from a flyer he’d posted in a Laundromat, and he’d removed his things before the sublettor moved in. A neighbor
MacKenzie managed to contact said he believed Stephen had sold all his worldly possessions to pay for the trip to Africa.
The neighbor had bought a piano from Stephen, an upright, for three hundred dollars. The neighbor described Stephen as a loner,
a really nice guy who nevertheless didn’t seem to have that many friends.
Mack didn’t know Stephen played the piano.
Examining his belongings more closely, she discovered that the ticket he’d bought had been one way. An ATM transaction receipt
showed that he’d withdrawn $2,000 in cash a month earlier, and that he still had $6,217.23 in the bank. She called the bank
to say she’d be acting as executor for the estate, and that Stephen would have wanted his money donated to charity, Oxfam,
she decided. The bank said there’d be paperwork. She gave them her stateside mailing address. She was unable to turn up any
will, note, or indication of what Stephen might have wanted to have done with his remains upon his demise. He’d said only,
after their night together, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but as bad as everything in this country is, I wish I could
stay right here with you forever. I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier or more alive.”
So she made arrangements for that to happen, for him to stay there forever. She had him cremated in a mortuary in Accra, Ghana,
and then she arranged with a C-130 pilot flying a relief mission to take her over the GPS coordinates she’d marked and noted,
the morning they’d awoken together. She put Stephen’s ashes in a clay bowl, of traditional Fasori design, with an etching
of a lion on it. When the pilot lowered the C-130’s cargo door and the cargomaster gave her the go signal, she dropped Stephen’s
ashes out the back, where they would mingle with the African dust, and help redden the African sunset for a day, and return
to the land where humans first came down from the trees and walked upright. She’d decided, beyond what she had done already,
that she would allow the mystery of Stephen Ackroyd’s life and death to end there. She didn’t know quite what to say, but
she’d memorized something she thought might be appropriate.
“Kwa maana jinsi hii Mungu aliupenda ulimwnegu,”
she said.
“Hata akamtoa Mwanawe pekee, ili kila mtu amwaminiye asipotee; bali awe na uzima wa milele.”
Her words were lost in the wind, but perhaps the wind was where they belonged.
She had two remaining tasks. One was to make sure that Corporal Okempo received a commendation for bravery under fire from
the African Union, if not a promotion as well. The second task was to order the largest birthday cake she could find, chocolate
with lots of frosting and colored flowers, and all the birthday candles it could hold, delivered to the orphans at Camp Seven,
which was still under reconstruction. The cook she talked to on the USS
Lyndon Johnson
told her he’d worked in a bakery stateside. She found a relief pilot willing to make the delivery. On the cake it said, in
bright red letters made of frosting,
THIS CAKE IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT MONSTER-FREE.