theatrical flourishes, which he returned by touching the Min of his maroon beret with the tip of his swagger stick.
'Colonel Courtney,' he greeted Sean in passable English. 'We have been warned to expect you.'
For Sean, it was refreshing to notice that Renamo wore conventional badges of rank, based on the Portuguese army conventions.
This man had red field officer flashes and the single crowns of a major on his epaulettes. During the bush war the tells had eschewed the capitalist imperialist traditions and dispensed with the symbols of an elitist officer class.
'You will spend the night with us,' the major told him. 'And I look forward to having you as our guest in mess tonight.'
This was extraordinary treatment, and even Sean's captors were unpressed and in a strange way rather proud of him. The sergeant himself escorted Sean down to the river and even produced a fragment of green soap for him to wash out his bush jacket and shorts.
While they dried on a sun-heated rock, Sean wallowed naked in the pool and then used the last of the soap to wash his hair and rid his face of camouflage cream and ingrained dirt. He had not shaved since he had left Chiwewe camp almost two weeks previously, and his beard felt thick and substantial.
He worked up a lather of suds in his armpits and crotch and looked down at his body. There was not a vestige of fat on him; each individual muscle was outlined clearly beneath the sun darkened skin. He had not been in this extreme condition since the closing days of the war. He was like a thoroughbred racehorse brought up to its peak by a skillful trainer on the eve of a major race.
The sergeant loaned him a steel comb and he brushed his hair out. It fell almost to his shoulders, thick and wavy and sparkling from the wash. He put on his damp clothes and let them dry on his body. He felt good, that charged restless feeling of being at the very pinnacle of physical fitness.
The officers' mess was an underground dugout devoid of ornament or decoration. The furniture was crude and hand-hewn. Ms hosts were the major, a captain, and two young subalterns.
The food made up for its lack of artistic presentation by its abundance. A huge steaming bowl of stew made with sun-dried fish and chilis, the fiery peri-peri that was a relic of the Portuguese onialists, and great mounds of the ubiquitous maize-meal porcol ridge.
It was the best meal Sean had eaten since leaving Chiwewe, but the highlight of the evening was the drink the major provided, unlimited quantities of real civilized beer in metal cans. The labels read 'Castle Lager' and in small print at the bottom, 'Verwaardig in Suid Afrika, Made in South Africa.' It was an indication as to which country was Renaino's good friend.
As the guest in mess, Sean proposed the first toast. He stood and raised his beer can.
'Renamo,' he said. 'And the people of Mozambique.'
The major replied, 'President Botha, and the people of South Africa,' which settled it conclusively. They knew Sean was from the south and was, therefore, an honored guest.
He felt so secure in their company that he could relax and for the first time in months allow himself to get moderately drunk.
The major had fought for the Rhodesians during the bush war.
He told Sean that like Job Bhekani he had been a subaltern in the Rhodesian African Rifles, the elite black regiment that had fought so effectively and inflicted such slaughter among the ZANLA guerrillas. They soon established the camaraderie of old brothers-in arms Without obviously pumping him, Sean was able to nudge the conversation along and pick up the crumbs of information the major let fall more freely as the cans of beer were consumed.
Sean's estimation had been correct. This was part of the northern perimeter of a Renamo army group. The fortifications were deep and dispersed as a precaution against aerial bombardment.
From this base they marauded southward, hitting the Frelimo garrisons and strafing and raiding the railway line between Beira on the coast and Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.
While they were still working on the first case of beer, Sean and the major discussed with seriousness the significance of that rail link. Zimbabwe was a completely landlocked nation. Its only arteries to the outside world were the two railway lines. The major one was southward into South Africa, via Johannesburg to the major ports of Durban and Cape Town.
Mugabe's Marxist government bitterly resented being reliant on the nation which, for them, epitomized all that was evil in Africa, the bastion of capitalism and the free-market system, the nation that for the eleven long years of the bush war had propped up the white regime of Ian Smith. Mugabe's hysterical rhetoric against his southern neighbor was incessant, and yet the foul hand of apartheid was curled around his jugular vein. His instinct was to look eastward into Mozambique for salvation. During his struggle for independence Mugabe had been ably assisted by the Frelimo president of Mozambique, Samara Machel, whose own struggle against the Portuguese had only just culminated in freedom from the colonial yoke.
Frelimo, his brother',4arxists, had provided Mugabe with recruits, arms, and rut support for his guerrillas. Without reservation they had offered him the use of bases within their territory from which to launch his attacks on Rhodesia. It was only natural now that he had once more turned to Mozambique to provide an escape from this awful humiliation of being seen by the rest of Africa, by his brothers in the Organization of African Unity, to be dealing with the monster of the south, and not only dealing with it but totally dependent on it for every liter of gasoline, every ounce of the daily stuff of survival.
The railway line to the port of Beira on the Mozambique Channel was the natural solution to his predicament. Of course, the port facilities and the main-line system had been allowed to fall into almost total disrepair under African socialist management. The solution to that was simple and well tried: massive aid from the developed nations of the West. As every good African Marxist knew, they were fully entitled to this, and any attempt to withhold it could be countered by the equally simple and well-tried expedient of dubbing it blatant racism. That dread accusation would force immediate compliance. The estimate of the cost of work needed to restore the port and main line to full efficiency was four billion American dollars. However, as actual costs in Africa usu ay exceeded estimates by a hundred percent, the sum of eight billion dollars was more realistic. A mere bagatelle, nothing more than their due, a fair price for the West to pay for the pleasure and prestige Mugabe would derive from being able to thumb his nose at the monster of the south.
There was only one small obstacle in his way, the Renanio army.
It sat astride that vital rail fink, attacking it almost daily, blowing up bridges and culverts, ripping out the tracks and shooting up rolling stock.
The actual damage they caused was minor compared to the fact that their depredations gave the Western governments a fine excuse to withhold the funds needed to restore the main line to the condition in which it would be able to carry all of Zimbabwe's imports and exports.
The Frelimo government's efforts to protect the line were so fumbling and inept that the Zimbabweans themselves were forced to assist them. Over ten thousand of M s own troops were tied up with trying to fend off Renamo attacks on the line. Sean had heard estimates of the cost of these operations to Zimbabwe's economy, already one of the shakiest in sub-Saharan Africa, as high as a million dollars a day.
It was ironic that Mugabe, once the guerrilla, was now forced into the role of passive defender of fixed hardware and permanent positions.
He was experiencing the stings of the flea that he had once so merrily dispensed.
Sean and the Renamo major laughed at the joke and began on the second case of good apartheid lager. This marked the passing of the time for serious conversation.
Now they reminisced happily about the days of the bush war and soon discovered that they had both been at the same contact in the Mavuradonha Mountains on the day when they had killed forty-six guerrillas, a 'good kill' as a successful action was always referred to. Sean's Scouts had lain in wait in the gulleys and reentrances to the hills, acting in the role of stop group, while the Pa RAR had dropped on the far side by parachute and formed the sweep line to drive the terrorists onto the Scouts.
'You drove out as many bushbuck as gooks,' Sean remembered. 'I didn't know which to shoot first.' And they laughed and talked of other dangerous sorties, of crazy ops and wild chases and 'good kills.'
They drank to Ian Smith, the Banantyne scouts, and the Rhodesian African Rifles. There was still plenty of beer remaining, so they drank to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. When they 'Damnaran out of conservative leaders to toast, Sean suggested, tion to Gorbachev!'
This was enthusiastically adopted, and the major countered immediately with, 'Damnation to Frelinio and Joaquim Chissano.'
The list of left-wingers was longer than that of conservatives, but they worked their way steadily down it, damning them all from Neil Kinnock to Teddy Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.
When they finally parted, Sean and the major embraced like brothers. Sean had filled all his pockets with cans of beer, so that when he returned to his Shangane guards they too greeted him affectionately as he distributed the cans among them.
In the morning the Shangane sergeant
