anything.
Etan finished her coffee and looked at her watch. She would have to leave for the studios in a few minutes. Even though RTE in Donnybrook was not far away, she would be driving in traffic.
Fitzduane had scarcely touched his breakfast. He smiled at her absentmindedly when she got up, and then he went back to staring into the middle distance. She stood behind his chair and put her arms around his neck. She pressed her cheek to his. Beneath the banter and the tenderness he was troubled.
'You're doing your thousand-yard stare,' she said.
'It's the hanging.'
'I know,' she said.
'We cut him down, cut him open, put him in a box, and sent him airmail back to Bern; nineteen years of age, and all we seem to want to do is get rid of the scandal. Nobody cares why.'
She held him tightly. 'It's not that people don't care,' she said. 'It's just that they don't know what to do. And what's the point now? It's too late. He's dead.'
'But why,' he persisted.
'Does it make a difference?'
He moved his head so he could look at her and suddenly smiled. He took her hand in his and moved her palm against his lips; it was a long kiss. She felt a rush of love, of caring.
'Maybe it's male menopause,' he said, 'but I think it does.'
'What are you going to do about it?'
'Lay the ghost,' he answered. 'I'm going to find out why.'
'But how?' she said, suddenly afraid. 'What will you do?'
'I'll follow the advice of the King to Alice in Wonderland.'
She laughed despite herself. 'What was that?'
'‘Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’'
Etan had been sleeping with Fitzduane for nearly a year before she discovered he had once been married. He had never mentioned it. She had assumed that his way of life was the primary reason he hadn't settled down, but what she learned was more complicated. It helped explain his reluctance to make a further commitment. It also cast some light on her lover's growing obsession with this latest tragedy. Perhaps, once again, in his mind he had been too late.
The name in the yellowed press clipping was Anne-Marie Thormann Fitzduane. Etan had been putting together a documentary on Ireland's involvements with the various United Nations peacekeeping forces when a researcher dropped a series of thick files on the Congo operation on her desk.
The Belgian Congo – now known as Zaire – had been granted independence at the beginning of the sixties but had been ill prepared by its former masters for its new role. Trained administrators were virtually nonexistent. A handful of doctors was incapable of dealing with a population of more than thirteen million. Central government authority collapsed. Civil war broke out. Massacres and pillaging and wholesale wanton destruction became the order of the day.
A United Nations force was sent in to restore order and keep the peace. Before long, to many UN troopers the peacekeeping mission seemed more like a war. Elite combat units like the Indian Gurkhas were seconded to the UN. Fitzduane was a young lieutenant in Ireland's contribution, an Airborne Rangers battalion under the leadership of Colonel Shane Kilmara.
Etan was able to piece much of the story together from the clippings files. She learned that Anne-Marie had been a nurse with the Red Cross and had met Fitzduane at a mission in the bush when he was out on long-range patrol. They had been married within weeks. There was a photo of the wedding, which had taken place in the provincial capital. The honor guard consisted or Irish troops, and the bridesmaids were Red Cross nurses. The accompanying story told of the whirlwind romance. The couple looked very young and carefree and happy. The troops in the honor guard were smiling. Only their combat uniforms and sidearms gave a hint of the bloodbath to come.
The Congo was a vast land, and the UN forces were sorely stretched. Fitzduane's unit moved on to another trouble spot, leaving the provincial capital lightly guarded and under the care of central government troops. The troops revolted and were joined by an invading column of rebels – Simbas, they were called. Hostages were taken.
Etan heard the rest of the story from Fitzduane. Holding hands, they had walked slowly from his castle to the lake nearby. They sat on a log and looked out across the lake and the intervening strip of land toward the sea and the spectacular sunset. The log had been covered with moss and damp, and the air had a chill to it. She could still vividly recall the texture of the mossy bark.
Fitzduane had looked into the setting sun, his face aglow, and had murmured, 'A world of cold fire.' He had been silent for some moments before continuing.
'The UN Secretary-General had been killed in a plane crash a few weeks earlier. Everything was confused. Nobody could decide what to do about the hostages. We were ordered to hold fast and do nothing. The Simbas were threatening to kill the hostages, and we knew firsthand they weren't bluffing. Kilmara decided on his own initiative to go in and asked for volunteers. Just about the whole unit stepped forward, which was no surprise. Under Kilmara we thought we could walk on water.
'Anyway, we went in – the place was called Konina – by land, water, and air. Some of us sneaked in ahead at night and set up a position in a row of houses overlooking the square where the hostages were. There were about seven hundred of them – blacks, whites, Indians, men, women, and children. The town was packed with Simbas. There were masses of them; estimates ran as high as four thousand. Most of them were looting the town, but there was a guard of several hundred around the hostages in the square.
'The Simbas had threatened to kill all the hostages if attacked, and God knows, they had had enough practice at massacres. They were often compared with the siafus, the soldier ants of Africa, destroying everything in their path. The Simbas believed they couldn't be killed. They were mainly primitive tribesmen stiffened by Force Publique deserters and led by witch doctors. Each recruit was put through a ritual that was supposed to give him dawa – medicine. If he then chanted, ‘ mai, mai ’ – water, water – as he went into battle, enemy bullets would turn to water.'
'What happened to this belief when some of them got killed?' Etan had asked.
'The witch doctors had an answer for that.' Fitzduane smiled wryly. 'They said that the slain had lost face and broken one of the taboos. You had to follow the witch doctors exactly to keep your dawa .'
He continued. 'The job of my command was to lie low until the attack came and then prevent the Simbas from killing the hostages until the main force could punch its way through. There were only twelve of us, so it was vital we didn't make a move until the attack started. We knew we couldn't hope to hold out for more than a matter of minutes unless reinforcements were right on hand. There were just too many Simbas, and though quite a few still had only spears and bows and arrows, most had FALs and other automatic weaponry captured from the ANC, the Congolese Army. So our orders were crystal clear: No matter what the provocation, unless actually detected – and we weren't – do nothing until the main force opens fire.
'For eight hours we watched the scene below. Most of the hostages were left alive under guard, just sitting or trying to sleep on the ground, but a steady trickle was taken for the amusement of the Simbas and tortured to death. The torturing took place in a small garden at one end of the square. There was a statue there commemorating some explorer, and they used the plinth to tie their victims to.
'We lay concealed no more than fifty meters away on the second floor of the house, and we could see it all clearly by the light of huge bonfires. With field glasses, it seemed close enough to touch. We couldn't do a damn thing. We had to wait; we just had to. They screamed and screamed and screamed; all goddamn night they screamed. Men, women, and children were raped. It made no difference. They were killed in as many disgusting ways as the Simbas could devise.
