Rogue's March by W. T. Tyler Page B

knee-length tan hose, and high-topped boots. A red beret was stuck in his belt.
    â€œWorried about terrorists, are you, Reddish? I wouldn’t have thought it of an old bush sergeant like you.” He didn’t misplace the accent, like most French speakers.
    â€œI lost my stripes, I suppose. Like you.”
    â€œI heard about your bloke in Khartoum. On the wireless. Too bad. Didn’t know him, did you?” He was ivory-skinned, thin-faced, and slightly built, but tightly muscled, the sharp features under the blondish hair lit by eyes as cool as sea water. Size belied his strength. He had quick hands, as quick as his temper, which had once been unpredictable. At Goma, Reddish had once seen him drop an unruly mercenary corporal to the floor, jaw broken, so quickly he hadn’t believed it had happened.
    â€œNo, I don’t, but he’s not dead yet, is he?”
    â€œYou’re the expert, not me.”
    It was sweltering in the midday heat, and Reddish mopped his face and neck as he climbed the steps. At the gate he’d been kept waiting inside his boiling car for twenty minutes while the guard phoned ahead.
    â€œCome inside. It’s cooler on the side porch.”
    â€œNot on duty today, are you?”
    â€œAlways on duty. Why?”
    â€œThe uniform.”
    â€œMy Sunday kit.”
    â€œI was thinking at the gate I should be playing more tennis,” Reddish said, following de Vaux’s trim figure, which reminded him of his own lack of conditioning. His blue tennis shirt clung to his wet back, sweat rolled from his cheeks and neck. He was annoyed at himself again. Small talk too was a surrender of strength, and de Vaux would surely recognize it.
    â€œTennis won’t do. Not diplomats’ tennis. Don’t even chase their own balls at the Belgian Club do they? Not unless there’s a thousand-franc whore at the end of it.” De Vaux laughed, opening the screen door, and Reddish was conscious of the poor teeth, the result of his years in the bush. The trace of Cockney in the English was as strong as ever, but with an exaggerated nasality which bordered on parody, a navvy’s version of how a sergeant-major talked.
    â€œThe ball boys go with the club. I don’t think they’d chase them off, not with unemployment what it is.”
    â€œFrightened, are they? What do they think, those dips of yours, that ball boys will solve the bloody labor problem?” He laughed again.
    â€œIt’s hard to tell what they think.”
    The sitting room was small and sparsely furnished. A few children’s toys lay abandoned on the worn Wilton carpet. An expensive cabinet radio and phonograph sat against the wall below a dusty mirror and a reproduction of a painting of a Normandy cottage and hedgerow. On the footstool nearby someone had left a rag doll and a half-eaten croissant. There was no air conditioning. From the rear of the cottage drafted a babble of voices, children, women, and men, all gossiping together in an African dialect Reddish couldn’t identify and which, for that very reason, sounded aggressively loud. It was likely that de Vaux’s African wife, a cousin of Colonel N’Sika, the para commander, had brought a few of her family with her to the capital.
    They moved to the side porch, separated from the living room by the dining area and a pair of louvered doors. “Something to drink?” de Vaux asked. “Or is it too early yet? Whiskey, beer?” The nasality again, the exaggerated manners.
    â€œBeer would be fine, thanks.”
    He sat back as he waited, his shirt wet against his back. Beyond the white-enameled iron latticework the sunlight drifted through the trees, splintered in bright patches; but over the distant city, visible from the porch, it paled like smoke over rubble in the gaseous heat. A metal coffee table with a glass top sat in front of the rattan chair where Reddish waited. Nearby was a small bookcase, the