Excerpt: The Static Gospel

“I'm glad one of us can cook at least,” Turvy said around a mouthful of spaghetti. “I remember being stuck in BFE with Gui for a month, that was just pure ass. How did neither of us get dysentery, Gui?”
All seven of them - the as-yet unnamed cell plus their guest - ate at six that evening. Aaron had spent the entire day doing pretty much nothing, avoiding the news and getting as much sleep as possible.
“I remember you couldn't cook rice, Turvy, I don't know anyone that can't cook rice. Didn't they tell you how in the Corps? Semper fi, boil or fry?”
Apparently Victor wasn't just a fully qualified ass-kicker of a special agent. In his time with South Africa's National Intelligence Agency, or the secret police, he'd learned how to throw together a half-decent meal. Spaghetti with a rich white sauce was the main course.
“I remember deployment in Pakistan,” Paula said, gesturing at Roy with a fork. “When you and I, and was it Kurt? Amble? Kurt I think, when we had that job under Stover. All we had to eat was lamb. Bad lamb, too. I mean these sheep must have been half-dog or some shit, I don't know.”
Strangely Aaron didn't feel unwelcome at the dinner table with the six spooks. They didn't go into detail about the jobs they'd done - and on occasion he sensed that they'd have liked to, but wouldn't since he was there - but they were happy enough to include him in the conversation.
“You know, Aaron,” Victor said with a wave of his hand. “There's a few ugly things going on all over. But the ugliest thing I've ever seen, in my life. In my LIFE. Was Mirielle waking up after three days of the shits in the middle of Zimbabwe.”
The entire table erupted into laughter; Mirielle raised her hands a little and shook her head, smiling a little.
“No joke. I felt like death. Never eat anything you are offered in Zimbabwe.”
“But isn't it an insult if you don't eat what you are offered?” asked Paula, jerking her fork at Mirielle.
“Right,” Roy replied. “There's only one solution.”
At the same time, he and Victor spoke, looking at each other with the faint grin mirrored on their faces.
“Don't go to Zimbabwe.”
“How long were you there?” asked Gui, digging his fork into his spaghetti.
“A month or so,” Mirielle replied. “Your standard ground op. Nothing too, ah, technical.”
“Is it as dangerous as the papers say over there?” Aaron asked, taking a bite of his food, then sipping from the glass of wine he'd been poured.
“Worse,” Victor replied. “Bad enough when Robert Mugabe was in power; for the past seven years, those pseudo-religious assholes that hit the bank in Johannesburg a couple years ago have pretty much done whatever they want with what is already a fucked nation. The Golden Army, I think that's what they call themselves.”
He nodded softly, looked thoughtfully at his food.
“He wants to ask what we were doing there,” Roy said softly.
“Of course he does,” murmured Mirielle.
Victor took a sip of his water, tilting his head. “Maybe he should ask. And he may get to hear, potentially. But only if he asks.”
Aaron looked between them. He thought about it for a moment, before he looked at Victor, swallowing his food.
“What were you doing in Zimbabwe?”
There were a few moments of silence, before Mirielle started chuckling softly.
Victor smiled a wide smile, before he steepled his fingers.
“...there was an election. A sham election, just to make the interested parties think Zimbabwe had some kind of democratic future. The people of Zimbabwe, of course, think this gives them the right to vote who they want in power; it's what you'd think, if you were in that dirt bowl of a country and suddenly, the opportunity to change who rules you comes about.”
Aaron nodded, sipped his wine.
“Picture this. Ninety-five percent of the population vote against the people that are running this sham election. People are gunned down in the streets as they celebrate, because those in power never meant to lose. Martial law. People get killed. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands. It's a genocide. Or on the flip side, the people win; they overthrow those in charge, leaving their country a shattered shell, entirely lacking in infrastructure or government. True anarchy. People starve to death. People die. Body count is about the same.”
“Not a pretty picture,” Mirielle interjected softly.
“There was a village. A small place, I can't remember the name; but in English it translated into something like Hope River. Hope River? Is that right?” He waited for a nod from Mirielle before he continued. “It was six miles away from the closest source of fresh water and yet it was called Hope River. I'll never get that. Anyway. Hope River was the home, the...power base, if you will, of the opposition.”
“Like their home territory?” asked Aaron.
“Right. It's the home of those that are the most vocally against the Golden Army. Every house had this, this blue rag hung on the door. Big blue flags flying all over the place. A symbol against the Golden Army. THE symbol, I mean...there's no real resistance, at least, until the people sense that they could actually go against their oppressors.”
“Right.”
“So. We are in Zimbabwe for a month. We assess the situation, sniff out the will of the people...then, a week before the election, we slip into Hope River.”
Aaron's hand stilled on his glass of wine.
“Every man, over the age of eighteen. Clean, quick. Painless. Each and every one of them. And we took the blue rags, and the blue flags, and we dipped them in the blood; and we put them exactly where they were before we got there. And then we slipped out again.”
For just a moment, Aaron thought he was going to vomit.
“The body count that night was sixty-three,” Victor said, looking thoughtful. “Sixty-three deaths; and yet, when it came to the vote – less than three per cent of the population dared to vote against the Golden Army. When all was said and done, sixty-three deaths – plus small change wherever unrest broke out – was a small price to pay, to make sure an entire country wasn't devoured by itself.”
“...that's abominable,” Aaron said quietly, feeling his stomach clench.
“Isn't it,” said Mirielle, sipping her wine. “It's vile. It was a horrible thing to do, a truly awful thing, and the only good thing we could have done in the circumstances.”
“Bullshit. Bullshit, murdering sixty-three people is NOT a good thing to do!”
“So what do we do instead?” asked Gui, shrugging. “Send in the marines? The air force? Predators and Hunters all over the sky, bombing everything that looks like it is carrying a gun?”
“Diplomacy?” suggested Paula. “Sure, we could try diplomacy. Ask the big dictators to please play nice, otherwise we'll cry and cry and won't trade with them.”
“UN Peacekeepers,” Turvy said with a smirk. “Useless. They can't even stop a city tearing itself apart, let alone an entire country.”
“No,” Victor said, pointing to Aaron. “No, the only thing we could do – which we did with a heavy fucking heart – was make sure the election went according to plan.”
“So what then?” Aaron snapped. “You left the country in the hands of a bunch of brutal dictators! Everyone thought Hope River was the Golden Army's thing, right? Everyone assumed they would do such a thing, so obviously they are pretty bad! You left them in charge?”
“It's easier to influence people that keep their country firmly gripped, than the ad hoc leaders of an anarchistic uprising. Since then, we have influenced them, in our own particular way,” Victor said, glancing at Mirielle. “I wasn't involved in that op.”
“I convinced the leadership of the Golden Army to allow aid into the country,” Mirielle said with a soft nod. “It wasn't hard, honestly. Once I had assuaged whatever anger they harboured towards the west – and gave them something else to worry about – they let the water and the seeds in without even armed guards. Now? Zimbabwe is green. Zimbabwe has an economy.”
“So why is it so bad to be there?” asked Aaron, frowning a little.
“Because with the exception of Roy here,” Gui said softly, “we're all white. And the Golden Army picked up where Zanu PF left off; that is, painting us as the bad guys.”
“Oh,” Aaron said quietly.
There was silence, as the spooks looked amongst each other, then back towards Aaron.
“Sorry,” Victor murmured.
“This is the world we don't see because of the Data Security Act?”
“It's the world nobody should see,” Mirielle provided. “Data Security makes that a lot easier. Nobody has to be held responsible or accountable for the things that need to be done. Trust me, some of those things will unsettle you. Some of those things will make you wish you didn't know they happened; but the interests of the seven billion souls that populate this rock don't include complete disclosure. They include happy, content ignorance.”
“They teach you that line in...whatever school it is you people go to?” asked Aaron, quirking a wry smile.
“No. It's something I've learned, not something I was taught. You, after this, will understand the statement that ignorance is bliss. You're burdened with the knowledge of what is done. What has to be done.”
Silence reigned at the table for the longest time. Aaron looked down at his plate, then up at Victor, then Turvy.
“You've been a soldier.”
“Yup.”
“So you probably adhere to the whole...I go there so you don't have to, kind of point of view. Right?”
“No.”
Aaron blinked. “No?”
“No. I don't go there so you won't have to.” Turvy leaned forward on the table, resting his palms flat on it. “I go there because I've got the fortitude of character and the constitution to stomach all the nasty shit I have to do, so that fat fucks can sit at home and watch Oprah without getting blown up.”
“And because it pays pretty well,” Gui said with a sniff.
Aaron excused himself quietly from the table. He drained his wine and slipped into the second bedroom, where he buried his face in the pillow and tried to breathe.