he'd been the victim of a CIA conspiracy to silence him, while Professor Botwyk was equally adamant that a terrorist group had tried to assassinate him and demanded a bodyguard from the US Embassy in Paris. Dr Grenoy had temporized. If the American delegate wanted protection he would have him flown by helicopter to the nearest military hospital but he could rest assured there would be no recurrence of the previous night's dreadful events. The Chateau had been searched, the local gendarmerie alerted, all entrances were guarded and he had installed floodlights in the courtyard. If Professor Botwyk wished to leave the symposium he was perfectly welcome to, and Grenoy had hinted his absence wouldn't be noticed. Botwyk had risen to the taunt and had insisted on staying with the proviso that he be given the use of a firearm. Dr Abnekov had demanded reciprocal rights, and had so alarmed Botwyk that he'd given way on the issue. 'All the same I'm going to hold the French government fully responsible if I get bumped off,' he told Dr Grenoy with a lack of logic that confirmed the cultural attache in his belief that Anglo-Saxons were incapable of rational and civilized thought. Having settled the problem temporarily he had taken other measures in consultation with the Countess. 'If you refuse to leave,' he told her, 'at least see that you serve a dinner that will take their minds off this embarrassing incident. The finest wines and the very best food.'
The Countess had obliged. By the time the delegates had gorged their way through a seven-course dinner, and had adjourned to discuss the future of the world, indigestion had been added to their other concerns. On the agenda the question was down as 'Hunger in the Third World: A Multi-modular Approach', and as usual there was dissension. In this case it lay in defining the Third World.
Professor Manake of the University of Ghana objected to the term on the reasonable grounds that as far as he knew there was only one world. The Saudi delegate argued that his country's ownership of more oil and practically more capital in Europe and America than any other nation put Arabia in the First World and everyone not conversant with the Koran nowhere. Dr Zukacs countered, in spite of threats from Dr Abnekov that he was playing into the hands of Zionist-Western Imperialism, by making the Marxist-Leninist point that Saudi Arabia hadn't emerged from the feudal age, and Sir Arnold Brymay, while privately agreeing, silently thanked God that no one had brought up the question of Ulster.
But the main conflict came, as usual, in the differing interpretation by Dr Abnekov and Professor Botwyk. Dr Abnekov was particularly infuriated by Botwyk's accusation that the Soviet Union was by definition an underdeveloped country because it couldn't even feed itself and didn't begin to meet consumer demand.
'I demand a retraction of that insult to the achievements of the Socialist system,' shouted Abnekov. 'Who was the first into space? Who supports the liberationist movements against international capitalism? And what about the millions of proletarians who are suffering from malnutrition in the United States?'
'So who has to buy our grain?' yelled Botwyk. 'And what do you give the starving millions in Africa and Asia? Guns and rockets and tanks. You ever tried eating a goddam rocket?'
'When all peoples are freed '
'Like Afghanistan and Poland? And what about Czechoslovakia and Hungary? You call killing people liberating them?'
'So Vietnam was freeing people? And how many murders are there in America every year? You don't even know, there are so many.'
'Yeah, well that's different. That's freedom of choice,' said Botwyk, who was against the uncontrolled sale of hand-guns but didn't feel like saying so.
Dr Grenoy tried to get the meeting back to the original topic. 'I think we ought to approach the problem rationally,' he pleaded, only to be asked by Professor Manake what rational role the French Foreign Legion were playing in Central Africa in solving anyone's problems except those of French Presidents with a taste for diamonds.
