MISSION OF HONOR
71
'I agree again,' Kline said. 'So what does that leave us with? Are we facing some kind of religious-military hybrid? The Brush Vipers fought to obtain the independence Botswana now enjoys. Why would they want to be involved with a potentially destabilizing force?'
'I'm not sure,' Herbert said. 'But I agree with what one of my coworkers said. General Mike Rodgers was the one who called the incident to my attention this morning. I believe a message was being sent. That's why this Leon Seronga moved against the tourist office in daylight. They had the weapons and personnel to have massacred everyone. But they did not.'
'What kind of message do you think he was sending?' Kline asked.
Now it was Kline who was fishing. Since this part was speculative, Herbert did not mind going first.
'It could be any number of things,' Herbert said. 'They may have done it this way to assuage the government. To show them that while they had weapons, they did not use them. That will probably encourage a more moderate response from Gaborone.'
'A wait-and-see approach,' Kline thought out loud.
'Exactly.'
'Even though a Botswana citizen was kidnapped,' Kline said.
'The term citizen is a legal one,' Herbert pointed out. 'To most Botswanans, a citizen is probably someone who can trace his ancestry back hundreds, maybe thousands of years.'
'All right,' Kline said. 'That's reasonable. What else could the form of this kidnapping signify?'
'Well, it can also simply mean that Dhamballa is not strong enough to engage in military action but will if they're forced,' Herbert said. 'That might also soften the government's response. They pride themselves on being one of the most stable regimes on the continent. Gaborone will probably try to present this as an aberration. Something that can be handled. Maybe they'll want to wait and see what, if anything, happens next before stirring things up.' • '*
72
OP-CENTER
'But at some point, the Botswana military must move against them,' Kline said.
'Not if Dhamballa's end game is a modest one,' Herbert said. 'And we don't even know that this is Dhamballa. We also don't know what the master plan may look like, but I researched some of our databases before coming here. The Brush Vipers were one of four paramilitary groups that used to operate in that region of Botswana. Do you know where they got their weapons from?'
'Not from the Botswana military, I hope,' Kline replied.
'No,' Herbert replied. 'Worse. They came from someone we dealt with years ago.'
'Who?' Kline pressed.
'The Musketeer,' Herbert replied. 'Albert Beaudin.'
ELEVEN
Paris, France Wednesday, 3:35 A.M.
He had always worked late. Ever since he was a young man in occupied France.
Albert Beaudin sat on the terrace of his apartment overlooking Champ de Mars. The night was cool but pleasant. Low, thin clouds were colored a murky orange black by the nighttime lights of Paris. To his left, the aircraft warning lights of the Eiffel Tower winked on and off. The top of the tower flirted with the passing clouds.
Beaudin's earliest memory of the monument was also at night. It was after the Allies had come through Paris. That was when it was finally safe for his father and him to come to the city. What a night that had been. They had ridden for nearly twenty hours straight with little Albeit sprawled in the sidecar of a stolen German staff motorcycle. Albert was used to being up at night. Much of the work he had done was in the dark. But that night was special. He could still smell the diesel fuel. He could still hear his father and himself singing French folk songs as they sped through the countryside. By the time they reached Paris, they had no voices left. Albert had no derriere left either, after bumping around in the sidecar.
But it did not matter. What a journey it had been. What a childhood he had lived.
What a victory they had won.
Maurice Beaudin had worked with Jean LeBeques, the legendary Le Conducteur de Train de la Resistance, the 'Train Conductor of the Resistance.' LeBeques ran a locomotive between Paris and Lyons. Lyons was where spare parts for the railroad were manufactured. Because of the city's central lo-
74
OP-CENTER
cation and relative proximity to Switzerland, the French Resistance was also based in Lyons. Personnel could be dispatched quickly to other parts of the nation or smuggled to safety in a neutral country.
The Germans always sent a substantial military force with LeBeques. They wanted to make certain he was not bringing supplies to the Die Schlammgleisketten, as the Germans derisively referred to them. 'The Mud Crawlers.' The Germans were derisive, but they were not dismissive. From the time France surrendered in June of 1940 until the end of the war, the French Resistance was relentless. They sabotaged the German war effort and forced the enemy to keep much-needed resources in France.
Albert and his father were among the earliest members of the resistance. Maurice Beaudin was a widower. He
