Instruments Of Darkness by Robert Wilson Page B

minister, or even the president himself.
        The President might survive this one, but it's going to be painful,' I said. 'He's losing the support of the people. France is edging away from him. There's going to be a question mark about future US aid. He's been around too long. It's happening everywhere else in Africa. The day of the dictator is over. They're all feeling the cold wind now. Africa's going to be a different continent by the end of the century.'
        'What about here?' said Charlie.
        The army's the problem. You're never safe until you've got the army with you. The army's full of northerners from the President's tribe. They're not going to want to see their man go.'
        Charlie finished half a tumbler of whisky in one tip, poured himself some more and added another half inch to mine.
        'The southerners will get their election. The President probably won't get in, but whoever does will be under threat from the army from day one.'
        'A coup.'
        'The first thing any civil administration will want to do is weaken the army. Generals in the US don't like that and they don't like it here either.'
        'Is anybody talking about this kind of thing on the street?'
        'On the street they just want multi-party democracy. They don't know what it means beyond free elections with more than one party, but they want it. Some of them think they know what it means but they don't realize how much choice complicates things. They see France and Germany with democracy and they know how wealthy those countries are. So they think, if they're rich, we'll be rich. But there're some big gaps and a lot can happen in the gaps.'
        'It's gonna be a fuck-up, in other words,' said Charlie, his voice thick with the drink.
        'It's just the next stage. Africa's been dominated by the Europeans and now it's going to be dominated by their systems. It's the only road.'
        'The only road they know is how to fuck things up.'
        Charlie started pacing up and down the room. His forehead was glistening despite the air conditioning. Somebody had put a couple of bags of cement on my shoulders. I drank some more to see if it lightened the load.
        Some hours later, which turned out to be minutes, Charlie stopped wearing a trail in the carpet and fixed me with a malevolent, drunken eye. Maybe I hadn't been answering his questions, or maybe it was just the time of night when it occurred to him to start disliking company. I decided not to look back in case it stirred up his machismo and I caught the full force of Hurricane Charlie in an enclosed room. Wherever I did look, things either came towards me or I went towards them. I realized from the silence burning behind his eyes that the subject was going to change, and for the worse. As always with Charlie, it was going to get personal and it was going to be about sex.
        'How's that babe of yours, Bru?' he asked.
        'Heike, Charlie. Her name's Heike.'
        'Yeah, Heike. Kraut, right? Ossa Kraut like inna sack?'
        'Maybe it's time for me to go.'
        'Come on, Bru, ossa Kraut like inna sack? I went with a Thai chick once, she was tighter'n a duck's ass.'
        'That's not something I'd know about.'
        'On account of what, Bru?'
        'On account of English ducks are suspicious of people who come at them with that kind of thing in mind.'
        Charlie poured some more whisky into my glass and topped up his own.
        'You think you're smart,' he said, shaking his head and panting a little from the alcohol crashing around his system. 'English people. They think they're smart. Nina. She likes English guys. Me? I think they're all faggots. But Nina… when you meet her she'll tell you she likes English guys. She says: "They don't fuck you with their eyes."'
        'Now that's true, Charlie, once we've been told what to do it with, we remember.'
        'You don't know when to shut the fuck