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from Brazza, smuggled in.” He watched de Vaux’s eyes. “You still follow that, do you? Guns brought in from across the river. It’s something the para brigade watches.”
    â€œIt interests us,” de Vaux said diffidently.
    â€œThese would be Soviet guns, guns just shipped in.”
    De Vaux said nothing.
    Reddish picked up his glass and drank from it, then took off his glasses, sitting back. “That worries us. More than the Palestinians. If this group isn’t to use them, maybe someone else is. We wouldn’t want that to happen.”
    â€œIf these chaps are headed here, they’d be picked up at the frontier, at the airport. I’ll talk to internal security myself.”
    â€œThen we’d still have the problems of the guns already here, wouldn’t we? Someone else using them?”
    â€œHow many guns?”
    â€œQuite a few.”
    â€œWhere’d they come in?”
    â€œThat’s not important, is it? They’re here.”
    De Vaux smiled shrewdly. “What is it, your ambassador worried? His migraine comes on and all you chaps get a headache, just because some diplomat gets himself stuffed in Khartoum. Tell him no one is going to hijack him. I’ll send a company down to your embassy myself if that’s what he wants, another to his residence out on the river. Is that what he wants?”
    â€œThat still leaves the guns,” Reddish replied. “Let’s talk about the guns, what they’re doing here, who’s going to use them.”
    De Vaux turned in his chair, pulling a package of cigarettes from the table. He lit a cigarette quickly, fanned away the smoke, and picked up his beer glass, settling back in his chair. “I know bloody well what you’re faced with, Reddish. We all know. Someone gives you a list like this and tells you you’d better bloody well do something about it. Go talk to x, y, and z. All right. I’ll take care of it. Guns and terrorists, guns and someone about to blow your ambassador’s head off. He’s been in Europe all these years, hasn’t he? What’d he learn there? Nothing that’s any good here, I’ll wager. So now someone’s about to come through the embassy gates with rifles and grenades, someone with a grudge to settle, maybe because of the Middle East, maybe because of something else. A local problem, say. Well, you tell him this. It won’t happen. We won’t let it happen, see. I won’t let it happen.”
    Reddish watched him, aware that de Vaux might have misunderstood.
    â€œIt’s simple for you, you’re dealing with a diplomat, a man who can understand these things if he wants to. But I know the corner he’s backed you into. He wants you to guarantee his security, doesn’t he? Well, you guarantee it for him. You tell him whatever you need to—”
    â€œI’m not talking about his personal safety,” Reddish interrupted, “the embassy’s either. I’m talking about guns smuggled into the city, guns that might be used—”
    â€œGuns? What guns? Tell him there aren’t any guns. What’s happened? Has someone gotten to him the way they have the President? Listen, why do you think Colonel N’Sika and I left GHQ? Because every morning there were guns somewhere in the city, every bloody morning! And we’d sit there, the way you’re sitting there now, trying to write up the morning intelligence brief, knowing he wouldn’t believe a bloody word. But you’re not working for the President. You’re working with a man who knows what a Chinaman or a Marxist looks like, a sensible man. N’Sika and I were dealing with something else—crazy superstitious wogs whose brains fear had eaten away, like gonorrhea. You know the President. You know him as well as anyone. He’s made his pile now and he thinks everyone’s trying to take it away from him. What happened, did the