break it.
“Well, I was able to tell them a, mm, partial truth. I told them that it was classified and secret and terribly hush-hush, and so I couldn’t say much, but I could say that I was going where the people spoke French. They kind of winked and smiled and looked at each other and were real pleased. So I let it go at that.”
Alan grinned at him. “But you’re going to the other place where they speak French. Montreal?”
“Umm—close, but no cigar.” He gave a half-smile. “Africa. The middle part.”
After another silence, Dukas said, “Well, there’s a certain logic in that.”
“What logic?” Bea roared.
“I know you never noticed, Bea,” Dukas said, “but Harry is black. So are the people in Africa.”
“That’s sick!” she shouted.
Did Dukas and Bea dislike each other? Alan wondered. Maybe at base there was something sexual—an attraction gone wrong?
Rose jumped in to make peace, and Abe said something to his wife, and Alan poured more wine. Uproar, uproar, he thought. Well, it was friendly uproar. So far. Trying to make peace, Dukas muttered, “Well, at least Africa’s kind of quiet just now.”
“Like hell,” Alan said. “I’m worried about him already.”
“I thought the good guys took over in Rwanda and the bad guys got shoved out and the killing was over.”
“There aren’t any good guys,” O’Neill growled. “What there is, is three-quarters of a million refugees who’ve crossed into Zaire, which is ready to go up, anyway, and Uganda and Tanzania thinking it’s a great opportunity for them to make out, and there’s me in the middle of it. Thanks for being worried, Al.” He took more lasagna, to Rose’s obvious relief. “They offered me a choice, Bosnia or Africa. I took Bosnia, because I thought I could do the Jugs a spot of good, as the Brits used to say. So they sent me to Africa.”
“Sounds like the Navy.” He knew that under his jokes, O’Neill was worried. Probably about his parents’ reaction. They demanded a lot of him, and getting a posting to Africa would be “disappointing”—as in We’re disappointed in you, Harold. His parents would have preferred even Bosnia, was the implication, because it was in Europe—a place with a history and civilized people who just happened to be massacring each other. Alan thought of the torture barn and the man who had been on the “airplane.”
They were into dessert—Sicilian cassata from a recipe of Rose’s mother’s—and the uproar had quieted down when Bea got on the subject of Israel and then of Jonathan Pollard, the man convicted of turning American classified materials over to the Israelis.
“Pollard is a hero!” Bea cried.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dukas growled.
Bea threw down her napkin. She was goddamned if she was going to listen to anti-Semitic crap, she told them all.
“I don’t have to be an anti-Semite to think an American who sells out his country is a traitor, Bea. Get a grip.”
She scrambled to her feet and her chair tipped over. “I take this seriously!” she cried. Abe was on his feet and waving them both down, saying Don’t, don’t, and they were out of the room.
“You guys shut up,” Rose said. “She’s stressed out about something.” She went after them; seconds later, Abe came back.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry—Al—She’s upset, it’s been—She found that Jessica’s on the pill, okay? Just found out today.”
Jessica was fourteen.
Dukas reared back. “I’m sorry, Abe. I won’t take that crap about Pollard from anybody.”
When Rose came back, they were all looking at their hands. “She’s going to lie down for a little. Lighten up, guys.”
“The perfect hostess,” Alan said, smiling.
“Yeah, somebody compliment me on the food, or something. Wonder Woman Cooks!” She picked a crumb of cassata from Bea Peretz’s plate and ate it. “Not bad, if I do say so myself.”
Dukas looked whipped. “I ruined your dinner.”
Rose came around the table and kissed his balding head. “You didn’t ruin anything.” But Alan felt a chill, as if an unwanted future had put its hand on him. It was as if Bea’s daughter, growing older out of his sight, out of his awareness, had become the cause of the break. He thought of his own son, sleeping upstairs: was he, innocent, a kind of time bomb? He found himself thinking, Why can’t things just stay the same?
They all did the dishes and then poured out more wine, and Rose went to check on Bea and Mikey.
“I feel like shit,” Dukas said.
“Shut up about it, it wasn’t your fault.”
They were getting a little drunk, Alan decided. He’d better make coffee.
“I’ve put in for a transfer,” Dukas said. “I’m leaving, too.”
“Good God, why—you love NCIS,” Peretz said.
“It’s Al’s fault—he wrote me this letter. About Bosnia.” He looked accusingly at Alan. “You said they needed cops like me! Well, now they got one!” Now, almost apologetically, Dukas said, “I’ve volunteered for a war crimes unit. NCIS would have sent somebody anyway.”
Alan went to the kitchen to make coffee, shouting back to Dukas to talk loud so he could hear.
“I got no family, no kids, so what difference. Mainly I’ll put together this unit and try to go after some of these bastards.” He talked about the program he was joining, mostly a sop to the conscience of NATO. “Don’t get your hopes up,” Alan said, coming back. “You can’t save the world.”
“I can do something.”
“We were there six months, what did we do? We did Operation Deny Flight, did we save the old man who had his feet cut off? The guy who was tortured so badly he died of pneumonia? The UN set up enclaves, so-called safe zones, ‘safe havens,’ they’re where some of the worst fighting has been. Now they’ve signed a so-called ‘peace accord’ and divided Bosnia with a line like a snake’s intestine that makes ethnic cleansing permanent. It’s a rat’s nest. The Serbs aren’t the only assholes, either. Fucking Croatians are not exactly saints. The Bosnian Muslims are in bed with Iranian Intelligence. You can’t save them from themselves!”
Dukas was stubborn. “We have to do something.”
Peretz put on his skeptical face. “Who made us the moral guardians of the world, Mike?”
Dukas stuck out his lower lip. “We’re the most powerful nation on earth. It comes with the territory.”
“Maybe it comes with the territory to try. What doesn’t come with the territory is succeeding. It always works in sci-fi novels—you
