The Blackbird

Eighteen

It was a rustic drawing room, with a sofa and several chairs in a semi-circle in front of a deep stone fireplace, in which logs crackled and burned. Vivian Kamdela sat on one of the chairs, legs crossed, arms folded, eyes glaring at Grofield. She looked beautiful and nasty.

Standing in the middle of the room, a glass in his hand, was a tall, thin black man with gray-white hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He wore a dark gray business suit and a narrow dark tie, like an insurance salesman, but ruby rings glinted on both hands. He looked shrewd, intelligent, calculating, impatient, and cold as ice.

Marba said something in his native tongue, Grofield recognizing his own name planted strangely in the middle of all the foreign syllables. Then he said to Grofield, “This is Colonel Rahgos.”

“How do you do, sir?”

“I do well.” There was a British accent in the cultured voice, with some other accent half hidden behind it. “Do you drink whiskey?”

“Yes, sir.” Grofield put his overcoat over the back of a chair.

“This is African whiskey,” the Colonel said, “our own native whiskey. If you would prefer Canadian... ”

“I’ve never had African whiskey,” Grofield said. “I’d like to try it.”

The Colonel nodded at Vivian Kamdela. Without changing her affronted expression, she uncrossed her long legs, got to her feet, and walked over to the bar. She looked good in dark green ski pants and a brown turtleneck sweater.

The Colonel was talking. Grofield brought his attention back from the ski pants, and the Colonel was saying, “You have never traveled in Africa?”

“No, sir. I’ve never been out of the Western Hemisphere.”

“You prefer home.”

“I like to travel, but I do like to go home again, yes, sir.”

“Everyone loves his native land.”

“Not necessarily the whole land,” Grofield said. “But I do love the part I know. My wife, my friends, my home.”

“You are married?”

The green ski pants were coming back. “Yes, sir. My wife’s name is Mary.”

Vivian Kamdela handed him an old-fashioned glass. In it was a pale yellow liquid, a good three ounces of it, and no ice. In color, it looked mostly like flat beer. There was a glint in her eye as she handed him the glass that might have been savage amusement.

Grofield looked from the glass to the Colonel. “I usually take my whiskey with ice,” he said.

“Our whiskey doesn’t need ice,” Vivian said. “Ice destroys the bouquet.”

The Colonel didn’t say anything. He just stood there and watched.

Grofield had a feeling he was in for trouble. He lifted the glass to his lips and took a cautious sip and acid cut a groove through his tongue and straight down his esophagus into his stomach.

There was no question of faking a reaction. His eyes were watering, and he had no usable vocal cords at the moment. He stood there blinking, holding the glass up beside his face, trying to swallow and not choke.

Was that amusement in the Colonel’s eyes? Hoping it was, Grofield cleared his throat and tried to talk. Hoarsely he said, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil that bouquet. Oh no.”

“Is our whiskey too strong for you?” The Colonel smiled. “Perhaps it’s a weakness in the white race. Perhaps white men’s throats are softer.” He lifted his own glass, with about an ounce of the same yellow liquid in it, made an ironic toasting motion, and drank the whiskey down. His eyes didn’t water, he didn’t clear his throat. He extended his empty glass toward Vivian and said, “Again, please. And some ice for Mr. Grofield.”

Her expression was undisguised satisfaction as she held her hand out for Grofield’s glass. He started to hand it to her, then paused, looking at it, and said, “Is this glass also African?”

The Colonel frowned. “No, it was here.”

“Oh,” Grofield said, and handed the glass to Vivian, who frowned at it for a second in puzzlement before turning to go back to the bar.

The Colonel said, “I don’t understand the question about the glass.”

“I was just wondering if it was also one of your national products. I’m sorry I really don’t know very much about your country, Colonel, but for that matter I don’t know very much about my own country.”

“I understand you were forced into becoming a spy, it was not the result of patriotic conviction.”

“Being a spy,” Grofield said, “is very grubby work. It’s like being a process server. I don’t see how anybody could do it for noble reasons.”

“Not to aid one’s country?”

“If a man has nothing better to offer his country,” Grofield said, “than his ability to listen at keyholes, he isn’t much of a man.”

“What do you offer your country, Mr. Grofield?”

“Apathetic allegiance. I’m not what we call a gung-ho type.”

“I don’t know the phrase, I’m sorry.”

“It means I haven’t devoted my life to serving my country.” Vivian had come back with the drinks, and Grofield took his and said, “I’m like most people. The Canadian who made this glass didn’t make it for Canada, he made it for a dollar an hour. Does that make him unpatriotic? And did the people who made the whiskey really do it for the greater glory of Undurwa?”

“Why not?” the Colonel said. “Why shouldn’t every man do his very best, at whatever his trade, for the sake of his homeland?”

“You mean the individual makes himself secondary to the state. I’m not very up on politics, but I believe my country is on the other side of that argument.”

“In theory,” the Colonel said. “Tell me, have you ever seen Harlem?”

“I was wondering when that would show up,” Grofield said. “Colonel, I’ve never seen Harlem and I’ve never seen Palm Beach and I think we can pretty well establish I’m not St. Francis of Assisi, but then who is? If I was a selfless greater-glory guy I’d be doling out soup at a Salvation Army mission right now and I wouldn’t have gotten myself into the mess that had me dragooned up here. I know what my sins are, and I assure you politics isn’t one of them.”

The Colonel’s eyes glinted in amusement. “Politics is a sin?”

“You were the one who brought up Harlem.”

The amusement faded from the Colonel’s eyes. “That’s one way to look at things, of course. But I think we should get to the issue at hand. Is your drink better that way?”

“I haven’t tried it yet,” Grofield said, and tried it, and it was better. It was still white lightning, but drinkable. The explosion now didn’t take place until the whiskey was all the way down in his stomach. “Much better,” he said. “Thank you.”

“The question seems to be,” the Colonel said, “whether to kill you or let you live. You have insisted you won’t be imprisoned, which would be the humane compromise, so we must select one or the other of the extremes. Is that a fair description of the situation?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Grofield said.

The Colonel nodded and turned away, pacing a few thoughtful steps, then stopping with his back to Grofield to gaze at the window — outside, night had fallen in mid-afternoon — and then to take a sip of his drink. Finally he looked back at Grofield and said, “You understand, of course, it is a human failing, when one is pushed one tends to push back.”

“I don’t mean to push anybody,” Grofield said.

“You refuse to be imprisoned, that is a form of push.” The Colonel abruptly smiled and said, “That’s interesting, isn’t it? You can refuse to be imprisoned, but you can’t refuse to be killed. An odd situation, don’t you think?”

Grofield’s answering smile was rueful. “Very odd,” he said.

“So you’re a good American after all,” The Colonel said. “Following in the footsteps of Patrick Henry. Give me liberty or give me death, am I right?”

“I guess you are.”

“Yet when Mussolini said the same thing in different words,” the Colonel said, “the American people thought him despicable.”

“That sounds like politics again,” Grofield said.

The Colonel studied him. “Are you truly apolitical, or is it a tactic?”

“Both.”

The Colonel nodded slowly, thinking things over, and finally said, “Even if I were to give you your life, you wouldn’t keep it. Sooner or later you would antagonize someone else here, and that would be the end of you. And then the question would be raised, who let this man wander around free like this? It would cause me embarrassment.”

“I’ll be very quiet,” Grofield promised. “I won’t cause any trouble at all.”

The Colonel shook his head. “No. It’s your nature to cause trouble. I was given two descriptions of you before you came here, so dissimilar I couldn’t believe they were both describing the same man. That’s partly why I wanted to see you for myself, and now I see that both descriptions were right, and you are potentially more trouble than either description alone could suggest. You have given me no compelling reason to want to keep you alive... ”

“There’s no compelling reason to kill me,” Grofield said. “I’m not a danger to anybody.”

“You could be. It’s simpler to end the possibility before anything happens.”

“That’s an awfully small reason to end a human life.”

“A human life is a very small thing.”

Grofield said, “Is yours?”

The Colonel’s smile was cold. “Mine is not at issue. Yours is. I see no reason to exert myself on your behalf.”

Grofield looked at Marba, but Marba’s face was closed and expressionless. He wasn’t about to argue with his president on Grofield’s behalf, and Grofield couldn’t really blame him. He looked at Vivian, and her look flicked away, she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Was that uncertainty in her face? It could be, but not enough to mean anything. Could he get her to change her mind at this point? Impossible.

Still, there was no point leaving any shot unfired. “Vivian,” he said.

She got to her feet and turned her back, stood gazing into the fire.

The Colonel said, “It is not her decision, Mr. Grofield, it is mine. Neither she nor Mr. Marba could alter it.”

Grofield looked at him. “And it’s no?”

“I will send word,” the Colonel said. “Marba will now take you back... ”

It was no. A yes would be given to him right here and now, there wouldn’t be any reason not to. But a no was more safely and neatly delivered by messenger.

Grofield looked at Marba again, and saw faintly that Marba was sorry it had worked out this way. Sorry, but passive.

The Colonel was saying, “It was an interesting experience, meeting you, Mr. Grofield. My personal contact with Americans has been more or less limited to diplomatic personnel, an entirely different breed from your... ”

Grofield threw his drink in the Colonel’s face, hit Marba on the side of the jaw, threw the glass at Vivian Kamdela’s head, hit the Colonel in the pit of the stomach, grabbed up his overcoat from the back of a chair, and jumped through the window.