In Which Sarge Faces the Needle...

Cpl.,

Easter. I always think of Tanner's painting. The two apostles at the empty tomb, not quite dawn, the reconsiderations made of what is truly possible.

I had to be at the restaurant early. I've moved back into the house on the beach, but I've set up several more booby traps, something I should have done earlier, as well, I've set up a remote camera unit that transmits to a set I have in my car. The screen looks like a book, specifically, Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps. If they want to kill me, they shouldn't send in the clowns this time. I've gotten lazy, but when I saw them shoot at my dog, something was reborn in me. Something that wanted to live.

Still, the thirst for the needle is unslaked, and the local supplier eats his breakfast here most everyday. Always, two eggs up with french toast and bacon. He knows I have the taste, I can sense it, my skin itches when I serve him. I want to ask and then I want to kill him, but I hold myself distant from the turmoil, and he watches with a bemused smile.

"More coffee, sir?" I ask. He nods. Looks at me. I pour.
"You want a taste," he says under his breath to me, like it's a fact.
"I've had my brekkie," I say and move to another table, of three old women planning a day's shopping. He breaks the yolk on his egg and slathers his french toast then adds maple syrup until it drowns his plate. I break out in a cold sweat, Sam comes up behind me and slaps me on the back.
"Look who was out late last night," he laughs. I apologize to him and get myself back together. I think about how many ways I could kill the dealer with a fork, or a coffee pot, or more ominiously, a spoon. My hands.

They shake. But only for a second. I think of Cody. I think of you and Nwargo in the jungle. I am happy you ignored my advice. Smitty reports he was ambushed and killed four Separatist-terrorists, but he was almost hamstrung and has been rehabbing back in Berlin. It seems our movements, at least those emanating from my command, are being followed too well. I think of Ranger, silent in the middle of a stream. So I serve my eggs, pour my coffee and learn to keep my mouth shut. At night I wake up with dreams in my head: Ahmet asks me for more potatoes, but how can he? He has no mouth. It has been cut out of him. His blood fills coffee cups and from behind me I hear Aglionby yelling at Cody; a silent chorus, that is the only word, for they look ready to pronounce but do not, of Sierra Leone Army regulars, many of them decaying visibly, stand at attention surrounding me. They must have crawled out of the street, for outside the windows the streets, fleshy, begin to pulsate and crumble. Cody whines as Aglionby begins to scream and Cody whines again, louder; I wake up. There is Cody, nuzzling me, pushing me awake, the curtain breathes in from the window and I hear in the distance the sound of the eternal crashing with the temporal. Deep night. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare off, the Southern Cross promises sun tomorrow, peace seems to settle in. I wipe sweat from the back of my neck.

I want to take Cody along the ocean, think about the ships and the contests with the sea, but I am still a little snakebit by the events of last week. I decide to wait for the morning. I try to sleep. I think about leaving to find the man. To take his heroin. I wouldn't pay him. The bastard stabbing his eggs, thinking I'm nothing but a dead-ender looking for a fix. He tips poorly, he half-laughs when he walks out the door.

With the dawn, desire fades. Cody must run with the waves, chase the birds. I follow him into the beginning of the day. I begin to make plans as I run behind him. He looks back at me and occasionally barks and sets out after a slow bird or God knows what. Things must change, then Cody is in the water, he brings me out a stick that has traveled far. It is a gift far greater than any I ever received in Tallinn.

I throw the stick, and he brings it back to me, again and again.

I must learn how they trace me.

with gladness at your well-being,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Describes the Doublecross and Ahmet is Murdered...

Cpl.,

I am stuck in Yalova. Nwargo begs for help, everyday his position becomes more helpless, and I am friendless in Yalova. Ahmet is dead.

Will you go to Africa? You have everything required if you have been to the Ministergarten as I trust you have. Oh yes the day is dark and the hydrofoil does not move with the seas high and choppy. The weather, gray as it is, mocks the idea of human progress. I stay in Yalova with the rain and Ahmet's ghost; we worry together about Nwargo, that friend of mine who I miss so deeply now and the junk is close at hand again and the dens are full of the gullible and the possessed and I joined them in the deepest part of the night that swirled and ran on into abstract visions that approximated hell and ran over me like clouds lit from behind by the moon until I fell into a doorway senseless. Daylight brought dogs running out into the mud, scrawny and ill-fed, they barked and ran alongside me like the beggars in Falaba during that fighting there, what was it? Ten years ago now? The scars still seem to trace nightmares and I remember you said, when we lay there in the city famous for its resistance to slavery, that we were slaves to our sense of right and we both laughed and laughed and then you found us that palm wine that almost killed us and we toasted Sengbe Pieh. When we woke up the bodies and the dogs there...and I tried to shoot one and you stayed my shot and insisted that nature has a deeper idea of what life is than we ever can and the whole time I wanted the junk and we drank palm wine and shot at anybody who looked RUF so that the refugees might find some semblance of survival. Amid the madness were Mercerier and Villarceau (dead now, one of Ranger's) and the city disappeared so that even now nobody knows if it is a city or not anymore.

I know that Ahmet died nobly and that I think of the past to leave this pain of my heart that weighs as only sin and loss can weigh, but is this arrogance? Was it simply fate? How was he killed in those baths? The open eyes stared into the steam and the blood mingled with the waters and then joined them, disappearing back into the earth. His wounds were small, two expert plunges of a thin knife, slightly flexible, which made splinters of his right lung and his liver, but how was he identified and who set up that meeting with me only not to show? Why was I spared?

Night came as his murder became the ritual of the survivors (the identification, the wailing, the muttered and shocked plans for burial) until I fled, taking comfort in the meeting of a woman who called herself Asena. The night terrors and the old desires seemed lost in the moment's comfort, but like always, the illusion gave way to the unyielding hours and we looked at each other across the void of darkness until finally she broke the silence and bridged the distance with a caress. How I wished it had been enough! She claimed she knew of Ahmet, and that knowledge that he was helping an outsider had angered some of the locals who felt they could make no better deal than the Canuck's. Asena's skin was soft and her manner yielding but afterwards, thoughts turned north to Tallinn and I could not stay, though I knew the streets of Yalova ran with intrigues, jealousies and death. Where the Canucks are, after all, there is always discord.

Out in the silent night, I felt once again the tug of addiction and the skin puckered up, dying for the juice and Yalova was rotton with possibilities. The night ended with my defeat and morning found me penitant and sleeping in a broken doorway, that dreamless warm sleep that ended with a shopkeeper swiping at me with a broom and dogs barking, the sun still pink and soft against the morning star and the gray dawn. At the hydrofoil's pier I found a bathroom and the mirror showed the roadmap of last night's ravages; I looked broken and old. I washed my face and begged forgiveness of Ahmet until I realized I was weeping into running water thinking of that ribbon of blood that traced the distance between life and death. Youth has no place in this dangerous game. But time is up, and storms roll in with Franco-threats. The Canucks know I am here and they know what a prize I am for them. I have liberated a bicycle from some unfortunate however, and hopefully soon I will be far enough removed that before they realize I know what they know of me being here, I will have found some method of extricating myself from this hellish detour that has only been defeat and despair. What doorway that is not called home can soothe this soul? Soon the downpour outside must end and I will push to Bursa. We can make no more of the events of the last few days: what has been, has been; of this place, let me say that I when I think of it, I will mourn Ahmet and praise the kindness of that pseudonymous lover. Of other events, I have told you, enough is said for now. Remember Falaba, remember that there it was not always you saving me, and it was not always me verging on the lost. Do this and I will find my way.

And I will apologize to Nwargo for Yalova.

Help Nwargo!

always,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Addresses Ranger from the Despised Town of Moscow...

Ranger,

As always, it was excellent to hear from you. Let me assure you that I continue to wrestle my demons rather than surrender to them. Your information about the photographs is alarming, on the other hand, clarity will emerge in its time.

I have left Tallinn, though I return briefly sometime in the next several days. Sadly I heeded Yuri Dolgoruki when he pleaded so long ago, "come with me, brother, to Moscow," and I am holed up here at the moment . I suppose when one stays in Eastern Europe long enough, one invariably ends up among the bloated wealth and staggering impoverishment of Moscow, which are revealed in both respects most often through the town's banality. At least it is easy to disappear here. If somebody were to search for me, I could walk right by them and they would miss me, as they would undoubtedly be hunched over a map trying to understand the metro system. I would be right under their noses however, I am staying in the Zamoskvorechye neighborhood, hoping that I might pick up something among the expats that wander around bloviating on about trips to the Greek Isles and shopping excursions to New York and Paris.

I wonder still, what happened to that man I left unconscious. I want him to live, I think, so that my act of mercy has meaning. So often it is cruelty that decides fate, random or otherwise.

Moscow is, of course, very cold right now. I think I shall ice skate tonight, it is one of the small pleasures of this town that it is quite easy to acquire a pair of skates and forget everything else for awhile.

with best wishes,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Calls Down the Rain and it is Snow Snow Snow...

Cpl.,

What is left? I had taken a coffee cup from Aglionby's sink, dried it and threw some bullets in it; the cup sat at my feet and I leaned against the wall, looking out at the slow traffic of the holiday. I thought about Nwargo in Africa, I thought stupidly, "it's warmer there" and let my thoughts wander across the landscape of the last few months and then further back toward thoughts I need hardly describe. Idly I looked at the colors that drifted by under the window, from even just five floors up, people are reduced to the colors they wear and a few identifying features. "What tells me who I must kill?" I thought. Aglionby didn't have an answer for that.

I didn't either.

I started to get hungry from the boredom. I didn't dare leave the window and I could feel an old hunger return. It creeped up from my blood into my thoughts, and then it was in my pores. I was sweating, the corpse was beginning to smell. I knew Aglionby had a few faults, it was an idle thought.

Still people walked by to their relatives, to their friends, for meals together, for opening presents; Aglionby smelled. If there was a clock it would have counted the hours but there were only the shadows falling into the apartment, now longer. I thought about her smiling at that judge, he was a good man. I was happy for her.

Out the window nothing changed. I could feel the urge, I could smell it past the corpse. I knew he had some. I knew it was here, in the apartment where I had killed him. I needed to look out the window, to focus. I had seen it on his arms. The winters are long here, his assignment had undoubtedly bored him and the women, if they don't challenge, don't long interest. From his file, he must have never learned this about women; he must have been going out of his mind. There was nothing about tracks in his file though, it must have been a recent development: something to make the nights go away.

Let me tell you something about the thing that enslaves you, it is always interesting. It's never the same old thing. I thought about her and what had happened after dinner with the judge. I looked away from the window, appraising the room. Aglionby was sprawled out, there was a shelf with a jar, house keys splayed next to it with a keychain from the Space Needle. Fate with its obvious sense of humor, a tracing of our weaknesses like laughing at a man tripping over a rock. I looked in the jar: nothing: some change. A pencil. I settled back against the wall, looking out across the street. Nothing. The weak sun of afternoon was already beginning to fade, in an hour there would be no light, and then what?

I sat there for a few minutes trying to clear my mind. Suddenly I was exhausted. I wished Nwargo was here and looked at the corpse on the bed. His boots were Russian, there was a backpack in a corner near the bed: the eternal student. I looked in the bag, I had been trying not to because I knew what I would find there. Nobody would stop me. I tried to fool myself. I looked out the window, but wouldn't they have come by now? By now they must have had some idea that if I was anywhere, I was here. Aglionby had been dead for some hours now. Would they dare wait for night?

With my talent for escape?

I found the stuff I needed to fix, but not the stuff itself. I knew where to look for that too.

I started with his pants pockets. Nothing. The usual things. Gingerly I rolled him over a little, the bed was streaked and puddled with blood; I found his breast pocket. The baggie hadn't let the blood in but it was greasy, I was shaking and it was hard to open it right. Everything smeared. I felt sick. I looked out the window. Nothing. My hands were shaking. I thought of Greenville, the Sinoe River, my last fix and the corpses there. They had floated like logs, colors of their shattered bodies and torn clothing muted by the river. When a thing is a corpse that is all that it looks like, but you know that. I didn't want the junk, but I had the fever. I was bored and scared, the last month had shattered me. What was this betrayal by Ottawa? What had happened to those villages in the Sahel? Her smile and the judge. The endless watchfulness, the double-crossing and wondering who knew what? I told the Spanish captain that I would come to Tallinn and that was it, he would say I was in Helsinki or that I had told him Helsinki but he guessed Minsk. What kindness there can be in this! But my hands were shaking, I didn't want to be who I was anymore. I didn't want this accumulation of lies and truth so that it hardly mattered anymore if this were Greenville or Tallinn, New York or Tokyo. I wanted it all to mean something, and if it couldn't, then it couldn't matter anymore. Ottawa left me out in the cold? Calrissian, who had recruited me years ago? I wanted a reason. I wanted payback.

The junk was bubbling. I let it bubble. I dropped the spoon and immediately cursed at myself. "Fool!" I said out loud. I leaned back against the wall, without even that to distract me now. My victory over the junk meant nothing to me, a noble but meaningless gesture. I would probably still die before the next sunrise. But I refused to die a slave and I refused to die with my belly up to the French pursuit. I found a stick of gum from God knows when in one of my pockets and stuck it in my mouth, waiting for them to appear.

Undoubtedly they would be shadows. Clouds obscured the slipping sun and the snow began, ever so gently, to fall. The snow caught the light from windows and streetlights that slowly blinked on, awakening to the night. I only felt my tears then, when I thought that I loved this earth more than anything. It is good that we can still feel this way, Cpl.

It is late, I must conclude for now before I bore you completely, but you must indulge me to continue with my narrative when I am next continuing this present journey. There is a morning train, and I will try and continue it then, but I know you wait in Berlin for news of me. You have found some of that news here.

Barking like a dog? Quick thinking Cpl., it has saved me once or twice as well. Indeed, man's best friend!

without further delay,

I remain,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Fears the Shadows...

Cpl.,?

Cpl.? Where are you? The days are dreamscapes of half-lived lives and dead children in mounds of acorns and pinecones. I sleep and wake with no sense of where I am or what borders separate dreams and wakefulness. Neither seems reality to me, but in both I find some necessity of experience. It has been almost two weeks since I have heard from you.

I am in Eastern Europe, Lithuania; I left Nwargo standing on a camouflaged airstrip in the cursed country of Nigeria. I am on my own, or rather, should I say, I head a team of five, and we are first to Lithuania to clean out a den of Frenchies who run a string of delis that launder most of the French separatist money from Asia. Everything comes through Honshu in Japan, across Vladivastock into the whole of Russia and everything ends up here on the heel of the Baltic in Klaipėda, with all of us around it, offering up bribes in broken German to a bunch of longshoremen. The rich go to Nida, just down the coast, everyone else is here, and the Frenchies have an easy time of with the laundering because everybody's looking in Grand Caymans and Isle of Man. From here it's up to Estonia and then across to Ukraine. At some point I will be in St. Petersburg. Perhaps we can meet there?

Stewart and Halliday are with me, you might remember them from that odd excursion in Patagonia, and I have a few newbies from the Academy. One shows promise, this kid Newfield. He's from Banff, and his instincts have been honed for Eastern Europe through his wandering the lonely Rockies near his home. We trained him at the base at Prince Edward's Island to get him a little out of his element and he seems quite able to adapt to new environments. He's smart, and he knows politics. Already he asks about Calrissian in ways causing me to wonder where he gets his gossip.

Your silence on that point is sore indeed. I wonder what it is in Berlin that keeps you from the pen, the ink and the ingenious methods of delivery I have come to expect.

During the day I work in a haze, cognizant, but in the motions of the work, the laying of the groundwork I half-exist in hallucinations of what might be. I have some sense that things can go wrong easily, and in my dealings with the network here, I can see why. I will be talking to a contact, say in the neighborhood of Eglė, and suddenly his voice loses meaning and I hear what must be his thoughts, terrible things full of prophesy and foreboding. I can barely listen. And then he is back, talking about where a drop must be made and yet I look at him and I feel he knows what I have felt, and in his look I see confirmation of that truth. And at night, the dreams, they are so clean and clear, a sight like that after you have just come out of a fog, the edges of things sharp so that it almost hurts, and in the dreams there are earthquakes and lovers, some dead and come back and in the distance there are wails and screams from the broken cities that seem to be African and European, with Canadian touches, like a bar in Montreal I used to go to lies broken apart in the middle of some avenue, or a newspaper cluttered and in pieces among the rubble of all this. And everywhere the screaming and people, some living, some dead, reaching out to touch me, the only reality among the smolderings and yet I feel myself a projection onto this new vision of somewhere and nowhere. I wake up in the quiet, the engines from the harbor the slightest vibration in the room, the window open with a cold breeze and I wonder what Calrissian is plotting and how I am involved. I wonder that I haven't heard from you? I think about Nwargo's worried face the day I left and Newfield's questions, almost impertinent, as if he knows he will never have to impress me to jump rank. Impulsively I get up and wander to the kitchen, the old woman, Liudvika, is already up and complaining about her rheumatism in the changing weather of this suddenly colder autumn.

It is the last absurdity, but everything seems like it's working. The speed with which I have set up this operation makes me nervous, much could go wrong, yet, I must say, it seems foolproof, and I think we can get most of the French operatives alive. From there we can take the operation to Estonia. I have some hope, but in this deepest night, it seems there are gears pushing the clocks in undiscoverable ways. The first bird of morning is outside, I hear him rather than see him, the shadows the trees have made against my curtains in the night with the moon are fading, replaced by their more stubborn realities.

I must go and make sure the safehouse in Kretinga is ready. If all goes well, that house will see us forward.

in anticipation of your correspondance,

I remain,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Argues that the Immortal Soul is the Ethical Soul

Cpl.,

As I scratch these hurried lines, I am in one of those trucks you only see in Africa, more rigging than rig, kept alive because it needs to be alive more than anything else, and we are looking through powerful binoculars at what must be Mercerier's camp. A Gaulic face, a circle of shadow under the large desert sun, suggests we have gotten lucky, and yet I must write, your last letter so disturbed me.

We swung back north on a hunch, I had noticed a hidden room in a storefront in Bokoro (you will recall, this is where MacFendrich got his, the poor bastard, with his "Birds of the World" guide always to be found in a random pocket - one bullet was actually stopped by that most civil of books, it was the 16 other bullets that ripped him to shreds - his face was bloody oatmeal), well, there was a nervous man there with a satellite phone and a copy of a 1974 National Geographic (a great article in there about the Phoenicians by the way), and so Nwargo grabbed him and immediately spoke in some language that was completely unknown to me. I couldn't pick up anything, but Nwargo was angry and the man shrank back and began to talk in a desperate ramble, I went over and smacked him to quiet him down and Nwargo pointed in his face. The man hurriedly began to make a map, drawing it right on a table, and we have him bound with us now.

The map has led us here.

I am nervous Cpl., we have a chance here, I shake with anticipation, or perhaps a stronger pull sways me. My mouth is dry, my pulse echoes in my retinas and I want to feel needle breaking skin, and then I want to kill Mercerier.

He is there. We will move against him soon. There is nothing here for me but the action. Nwargo too is nervous, he looks at me and looks away quickly. I know he does not trust me completely, how could he? I radiate addiction and I hold four grenades in a belt across my chest. I have a gun holstered and a rifle next to me as I write this. None of these things can give me relief. Mercerier is there, I must move soon. Yet this stillness seems an eternity behind me and an eternity in front of me. The sun trips over infinate stairs as it makes its way across the wide sky just north of the equator, I must wait. Nwargo looks over again and begins to pace. Somewhere a bullet's flight away, Mercerier looks through some papers, or perhaps receives some information from somebody somewhere. Perhaps I am a bullet's flight away.

That is the difference between Mercerier and I: I know I am always a bullet's flight away. His confidence must betray him sometime! It is only in consistency that we can measure what we are, heroes of moments rarely are heroes of years. We must fight every minute, but how I long to slip into bliss for at least mere hours occasionally. To be lost in the pleasure that feeds me, sustains me, starves me with absence when I need it most. I must leave it with the past, I am in agonies, for just a few grains of the pure stuff to make this time something not defined by this empty stretch of desert, I am afraid of what I would sacrifice.

But the mission is all. I write, I am distracted enough. As we make our way toward night, I will let this mission mean everything.

Nwargo approaches, we must make final arrangements.

I will be in touch directly. If what you say about Calrissian is true, there is a mole. And one who's lair is deep.

If they pursue me, you know you become that much more vulnerable. Try to distance yourself from me for now, and see if you cannot get some little closer to Calrissian.

I will make inquiries from others when this is over.

Sarge

In Which Sarge Considers the Rain Down in Africa...

Cpl.,

In the Sahel one always wonders from which way death will come. Here, prayer is reserved for survival, for God, like man, must focus all His attention upon it for those here to live. I am out of the mountains and in the middle region of Chad on a fool's rumor that out here somewhere, Mercerier recovers from an infection that almost cost him his life, though sometimes they say it was his leg, or his left hand and not his life, that was the real point of contention. I don't believe he is still in Chad, but that he is in Cameroon or perhaps even at his Côte d'Ivoire safehouse, and by the way, thanks for that tip, but we can't seem to trace that safehouse any closer than Abidjan's Treichville neighborhood, from there it's a maze of markets and the furious West African sun that seems to beat to the time of war. How many despots bless the name of Mercerier? How many mothers curse his name to a judging God?

I am not to leave Chad on a fool's errand just yet however. With so much noise coming from the Côte d'Ivoire, I wonder if it would be better to lay low and see who else arrives to do business with the devils, and also, I can't help but wonder if all the noise is a feint to draw us off. After all, from Chad it is nothing to Cairo, Tripoli or Algiers, a Cessna's afternoon is all. What if Mercerier drew us south and west only to move to the northeast, and from there it's nothing to his connections in the Mideast, or scarier to comtemplate, a longer, more comfortable flight back to Quebec, with a bottle of wine and a forged passport for company. The celebrations at bars like the Pub Saint-Alexandre would only be the first slap in the face, and the easiest blow to take. So in Chad I do what all in Chad must do, I persevere. The karkanji slakes the thirst but one feels the desert everywhere, it encroaches even on the soul.

Yesterday it rained, and the colors that rain brought out! Women and children suddenly young again (children, young again? You know in Africa, there barely is such thing as youth; who indeed, was the last prom queen of Africa?) ran about and there were joyful shouts. Inside some hut, the rain beating about, I almost imagined I was somewhere else, but the rain stopped quickly, and before the hour was out, the Sahel again felt nearly barren, the dry winds of the harmattan picking back up. That these many peoples of Chad can grow from this soil what they do, that is Industry. I stand among these people with awe.

But Mercerier stands among them much the same way a DeBeers or a Cecil Rhodes might, taking from them what he will without compunction, all for aims that cloak greed in the guise of "belief" and "ideology". Nwargo goes about among these same people talking and trading, he has in his pack some fruits and assorted items of his country, and they bargain good naturedly with each other. Always he softly asks about, in their gossiping there are the shadows of fact, and we know Mercerier is barely two days ahead of us on the ground here, and for him to be traveling as he has, it is clear he was looking for something, and if he found it, we shall find out he did in the next 36 hours or so. Nwargo tells me, and as he did we sat in a truck full of tired farmers chewing some kind of seed vaguely restless as the harmattan winds whistled their prophesies of drought, that you once patched him up after being double-crossed on some nameless dock; he showed me the scar which has the shape of the underside of a cloud. "Not a knife," he laughed describing the weapon that cut him, "like a...like a..."

His face flushed even darker suddenly and he grabbed my shoulder,

"I too, was almost killed by something like a syringe," he said almost shouting, the bumps of what can only charitably be called a road throwing us into vague contortions as he continued, "It was drill with a bit, the French, he picked up in panic, I moved in too fast, the Corporal, he was quick with the bayonet to the French's throat, I could not scream my pain but the Corporal, he hummed under his breath while he fixed me. That was later," Nwargo's voice had already resumed its usual sanguine quality, "in this sinking boat, barely floating, you would not know we had just pretended one hour before to be Canucks to re-buy plutonium from some old KGB! Plutonium in a sinking boat!"

Nwargo was laughing and I laughed too, but I was jealous. I didn't know you were detailed to that mission. It is already the stuff of legend.

Well done Corporal, I will have to send you some karkanji as a mark of esteem. Make sure to drink it cool, but it does not need ice.

Nwargo sends along his continued thanks and the greetings not just of his own, but of his family as well. He looks over my shoulder to make sure I have included this. After finishing this letter to you, I will join him and the people of this tribe, for one last prayer for rain, before continuing to the next town. Here, all religions, like the languages, bleed into each other, and all gods hold some hope for the future.

as always,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Bemoans His Temptations...

Cpl.,

Chad. Memories flood back quickly, years ago, the French and the Libyans playing dominoes with the land and the cities here, assassinations like practical jokes and the French speaking South just so many bullies on the bloody playground of savanah and encroaching dust. Yes. This was land I walked when much younger, when I still thought you could learn to grow oranges and dates from land little more than thorns and rocks. In the mountains we have developed many contacts, but there is little hope for them, but it is here that I have been tracking the elusive French Separatist, Jean Vigault Mercerier, and trying to update my information about what he plans next and who he plans with. At night, in the mountains, small fires to keep us warm and our hushed voices carried on the winds into the empty sky, our Arabic, mine broken and theirs quick and mumbled, speaks to the confusion of the moment. But luckily, Nwargo is with me, and translates and picks up on things that I miss, distracted as I am by the dreams that persist even with waking, images tangled together trying to weave what should be so out of the sweat of nightmares.

I have not touched the junk in seven months, but alone and without occupation sometimes for days at a time, playing a waiting game with someone who might not even know he is playing it, I feel the mind atrophy and crave after the tribal gatherings that are just so many reassertions of what we already know. Yes, Mercerier is here; yes, he is wounded; yes, he is gathering a group - but for what? Speculation, a miasma of idleness, gives no release to thought or anxiety, and I sweat with my desire to float away in the warm cradle of my former life. What I was in Kiev and Bratislava, the things I had to do, pushed me to places that surprised and disgusted even me, and pained you and the one or two others that discovered it. If Nwargo hadn't accompanied me to that drop in Ostrava, his first time out of Africa, and for what? An informant who didn't inform and me in that cramped alley, spitting blood and helpless, for all the world some hellish spectre of an infant gone terribly wrong: the dead body of that fifteen year old baker's son in a trashbag down by the Oder River fixed in my mind like a Last Judgment. I found the vein so fast and Nwargo down in the Karolina District running through the collapsed skeleton of the Eastern Bloc looking for me, coming to tell me that it was all a set-up and the Baker's son was a stooge, perhaps knowing too well what he would find. The baker's son, too young for that game, and Nwargo hoping to save not just angels and demons that night, but all of us in between, but the only life he would save that night was mine. I felt his hands, cool against my flushed face and how the breath came then, how the dirty air felt clean! The safe house was compromised and we stayed with a sympathetic salesman who lived near the Technical University. Now Nwargo saves me again, we play endless games of "Golachi", an ingenious game of his people in which the goal is to end up with groups of seven, using stones that have similar but not exactly the same paths to travel as pegs on a cribbage board. They travel more quickly and the afternoons manage to slip away. We talk of our youths and he is curious about Canada and would like to visit. When I tell him of the Canadian Rockies, he cannot believe that they are wilder and more rugged than this place. "But more fertile, a celebration of life, not of survival!" I tell him, and he laughs and says that Chad is the forgotten room of God's House. "It is not my home," he told me the other day, "but these people, in their suffering, they are people I understand, and I am glad we hunt Mercerier." He seems to understand that if this area becomes unstable, the French-speaking South will destroy the way of life these tribes hold sacred. I tell him to Ottawa, sadly, they are only a convenience, and that the only difference between the separatists and us is we use them, the separatists try and kill them.

So it's Chad. I fight the good fight, I have not touched the junk in many weeks and everyday we look for something that will take some of the sting out of the failures of Slovokia.

Cpl., I do hope that life treats you kindly.

with warmest regards,

Sarge