THE island of Cyprus, once torn by bloody conflict between Greeks and Turks, basked in the Mediterranean sunshine and the money spent by ten thousand members of the International Peacekeeping Force who made the island their Middle East headquarters Clerks, computer specialists, missile technicians, sensor analysts, bureaucrats, warriors by remote control, each of the ten thousand men and women who wore the sky blue uniform of the Peace Enforcers was paid well and regularly.
They had brought peace to strife-weary Cyprus, as Greeks, Turks, and even the descendants of displaced Palestinians found more to be gained by earning Peace Enforcers' money than by shooting at one another Prosperity did not end hatred and long historical grudges, it merely put them to one side while everyone put their best energies into the scramble for steady money.
Banda Smgh Bahadur, commandant, IPF Cyprus, was a huge Sikh, still strong and fierce-looking despite his eighty-odd years His proud curly beard was as white as the immaculate turban wound around his leonine head His back was unbent, his shoulders wide and square as a castle gate In bygone eras he would have wielded a heavy curved sword against his foes, or fired a high-powered rifle with merciless, deadly accuracy.
Now he sat in a padded leather chair, surrounded by younger officers in a comfortable air-conditioned office as they pored over satellite pictures of poppy fields in Turkey The picture table was one large horizontal display screen, and the-false color imagery he studied was being relayed in real time from an IPF surveillance satellite several hundred miles above the Earth's surface Four young men and one woman officer were hunched around the table, bending over, scrutinizing the imagery.
The entire span of the table top glowed with harsh colors that showed steep lagged ravines deep in the Taurus Mountains, near Lake Van The face of an old man, thought Bahadur as he studied the seamed craggy display Much like my own.
"Papavei ^omniferum," said Bahadur's imagery analyst, a blonde young woman from
Bahadur looked up at her with eyes of cold steel The young officer touched a few buttons on the keypad built into her side of the display table A spectral analysis of the region they were examining appeared in a box at one corner of the horizontal screen Alongside it appeared a laboratory spectrum that matched it so closely Bahadur could not tell the difference.
"It's poppy fields, all right," said the intelligence chief, a stocky oriental "And illegal as sin "
Bahadur nodded a ponderous agreement, yet still brought up the display that showed all the legal poppy fields in the region They were small and under the relentless control of the Turkish government The fields in the satellite views twined through tortuous valleys far from the eyes of government inspectors.
"They even tried to overgrow them so the satellite sensors would miss them," said the blonde imagery analyst.
"We'll have to move against them "
Bahadur said, "Standard procedure Notify the Turkish authorities after we have sterilized the fields Offer our assistance in arresting and interrogating the farmers "
One of the young officers stepped swiftly across the office to a red command phone.
To his intelligence chief the Sikh said, "Trace the method of processing "
"Probably minimal," said the Asian "Just enough to make some potent opium They wouldn't dare to try to operate a sophisticated processing plant "
"They could have made arrangements with a legal medical house to produce extra, unregulated amounts of heroin," said Bahadur, his voice heavy, slow, weary.
"That is possible," the intelligence chief admitted "I will check on it "
The younger officers left after straightening up to attention and making casual but correct salutes Bahadur leaned back tiredly in his chair, alone with his thoughts.
In his mind he saw Peace Enforcer planes swooping low over those rugged valleys, spraying a nearly invisible mist of biological agents that specifically killed the poppy species and nothing else He saw poor Turkish farmers running from the IFF helicopters and paratroopers that dropped out of the sky to round them up and turn them over to their government police He saw smug men in expensive business suits sud denly arrested for their part in processing illegal heroin.
After all these years they still have not learned, Bahadur thought The money is irresistible The lure of enormous amounts of money, if only they can avoid the notice of the Peace Enforcers But they cannot Year after year, decade after decade, they continue to try We find them, we catch them, we kill their crops and destroy their factories and put them in jail for life And still others try.
The world is at peace, and even the lowest of the low are getting richer instead of poorer Yet people still turn to drugs Bitterly the old Sikh realized that global economic growth provided a larger market for the forbidden pleasures The wealthier the world becomes, the more people can afford to play with narcotics How the gods must weep at our folly.
Is there no end to it? he asked himself Will fools and devils always attempt to make themselves rich by crushing the lives of their brothers and sisters'.
The old Sikh got up slowly from his chair and walked to the window, where the port of Larnaca gleamed in the high Mediterranean sun, white and clean and prosperous The streets were crowded with businessmen and women striding along purposefully, while others ambled more casually through the shaded shopping arcades Down on the docks, la borers worked half naked and sweating How many of you, Bahadur asked them all, would sell your futures for the chance to make illegal millions?
Too many, he knew There were always more, every year, every generation Selling their souls to the path of evil.
He went back to his comfortable old chair and sat slowly in it, scarcely noticing its groan beneath his weight Still, he thought, there are other young men and women who join the Peace Enforcers, who dedicate their lives to the path of righteousness.
Bahadur was glad that younger men and women were willing to take up the challenge, to bear the burden that he had borne almost all his long life. For a moment his memory flickered back fifteen years to Africa and the day he had met Keith Stoner. A strange man, mysterious, powerful in spirit. Bahadur smiled and leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His last thought was of Stoner.
When his aide found Bahadur dead, the smile was still on the old Sikh's face.
Paulino Alvarado knew there was trouble when he saw little Ramon racing down the village street as fast as his nine-year-old legs could carry him, straw hat clutched in one hand, face red with exertion.
"Soldiers!" Ramon bleated. "Soldiers coming to the village! I saw them from the hilltop! Coming up the valley road!"
A lightning bolt of fear hollowed Paulino's chest, took the air from his lungs. Throwing down his half-smoked cigarette, he leaped up from the chair on which he had been sitting, his mouth suddenly as dry as the Moondust he had taken only half an hour earlier.
The village looked perfectly normal. Perched on a hillside at the base of the Andes, it looked down on la ceja de selva, the edge of the tropical rain forest, the valley where once coca had been cultivated to the exclusion of all other crops. Its one curving street was quiet in the late morning sunlight. The houses, built of solid stone from the mountains, stood silent and enduring as they had for centuries. A few women in black shawls gossiped idly by the well in the square. Children played up by the church yard. Most of the men were in the fields with the yellow tractors and other implements the Peace Enforcers had given the village.
And soldiers were coming up the valley road.
What we are doing is not illegal, Paulino repeated to himself. There is no law against Moondust. But he remembered his father's bitter anger when he had first brought the strangers into their village.
"They will bring ruin down on our heads!" his father had warned.
"But Papa," Pauhno had replied, "this is not like growing coca. All these men want is a place where they can manufacture their pills."
"The soldiers will come and kill us all!"
Pauhno had gotten very angry with his father and called him terrible names. There was money to be made, much money, more money than the whole village had ever dreamed of. More money than Pauhno had ever seen in his entire twenty-three years of life. Money enough to buy a beautiful new automobile and an apartment in the city. Money for women and good restaurants.
But his father saw through him. "I labored all my life so that you could go to the university and become an engineer," his father had said. "And you come back a drug addict. I am ashamed of my son."
Pauhno had cursed his father and screamed that he was not going to spend his whole life tinkering with computers while others made millions. His father, worn thin and coffee-brown from a lifetime of laboring over potatoes and corn in the Andean sun, bent and old before his time, bore the proud aquiline nose and strong cheekbones of the true Inca. But in the end he swallowed his pride and allowed Pauhno, his firstborn and his only son, to have his way.
Strangers came to the village, six men in tee shirts and faded jeans and dark glasses. They brought truckloads of chemicals in big jars, cartons of evil-smelling powders, and crates of odd-looking equipment made of glass and shining metal.
Pauline's father shook his gray head. "The soldiers will come, you'll see."
His son snorted contempt for the old man's fears.
"Many years ago," his father said, "in my own father's time, Norte Americana soldiers came out of the sky in their noisy helicopters and burned the whole valley, everything, coca, potatoes, corn, everything. As a punishment for growing the coca."
Paulino had heard the story many times.
"Growing coca was against the law, they said. We were bewildered. Since time immemorial we had grown coca. The men from the capital who bought it told us that they sold it to Norte Americanos. Now Yankee soldiers had destroyed the year's crop and the men from the capital said growing coca was illegal."
"That was years ago," Paulino said impatiently.
But his father went on, "Within one month other men from the capital came and told us that the Gringo soldiers had gone home and we could resume growing coca next season. In the meantime we nearly starved."
"But then ..."
"But then we were told to plant the whole valley in coca. So we did, and for years all was well. Until the day the Peace Enforcers arrived."
Paulino felt the inner trembling that signalled the need for another hit of Moondust.
His father droned on, oblivious, "The Peace Enforcers carried no weapons. Not even pistolas. There were even women among them! They told us that the coca crop was going to die, and it would never grow in this valley again. In its place, they would help us to plant the valley in corn and potatoes and squash, food crops they said were needed by hungry people thousands of kilometers away.
"The Peace Enforcers kept their word. The coca withered, blackened, and died. No matter what we did, coca refused to grow in our valley anymore. The Peace Enforcers gave us tractors and tools and the generator that turns sunlight into electricity."
"I need to go," Paulino said. His hands were beginning to shake.
"One moment," said his father. "Today we live in peace . .."
"You live dirt poor!" Paulino spat. "Those men from the city, they take your crops and give you so little you can barely stay alive!"
"We live simply, the way we have always lived, since the time when the Great Inca ruled all the world."
"That's not good enough for me," Paulino said.
His father saw how the young man shook and sweated. "Yes. I understand. Because you cannot control yourself, one day the soldiers will come and destroy us all."
Now Paulino stood rooted by the closed wooden door of the old stone barn, staring in the direction of the valley road, as if he could make the soldiers go away if he stared hard enough. In the distance the Andes rose to snow-capped magnificence. The sun burned hot in the cloudless sky, but the wind from the mountains was cool and dry.
And Paulino saw a cloud of dust rising above the valley road. He wanted to run.
Instead he pushed through the creaking barn door. Inside, six men in goggles, breathing masks, and stained plastic aprons were bending over a complex apparatus of glass and heavy metal levers.
"Put on a mask!" yelled one of the men.
"Soldiers!" shouted Paulino. "Soldiers coming to the village!"
All six men froze for an instant. Then they rushed for the door, throwing their masks and goggles to the floor of the barn.
Outside in the sunlight their leader, a wiry hard-faced Frenchman, dashed across the village street to the ramshackle shed where they kept their truck. He came back with a pair of binoculars in his hands. And a heavy black pistol jammed into the waistband of his pants.
Clambering up the rough stones of the barn like a monkey, he flattened himself on the roof and peered through his binoculars.
"Merde! It must be a whole battalion of them! Armored cars and everything!"
The others raced to the truck and jammed themselves into it The motor coughed twice and then roared to life as their leader scampered down from the roof.
"But you said what you're doing is not illegall" Paulmo clawed at the Frenchman as he hurried across the road.
"You knew that was not true," the Frenchman snarled, twisting free of Pauhno's grasp and climbing into the truck's crowded cab.
"But you told me "
Paulmo found himself staring into the muzzle of the gun.
"Get away, you stupid fool, before we run you down "
The truck lurched out of its hiding place and down the street, coughing and sputtering, throwing up a little storm of dust and grit as it raced for the road that led out of the valley Paulmo stood in a daze, wondering what he should do By the time he heard the engines of the approaching government troops, he had made his decision, He ran.
Just as he had done when he was a child hiding from his mother's wrath, Paulmo dashed up the slope of the hillside behind the village's houses, scrambled past the terraced gardens where the women grew their kitchen vegetables and the men cultivated a few wine grapes, and hid in the secret cave beneath the lip of the moss-covered hilltop.
It was no more than a low niche in the hillside, but from that hiding place he could see the entire village and all the valley As a child he had spent long hours there, flat on his belly, watching the villagers at their work while he daydreamed whole afternoons away Now he lay in the low narrow cave, trembling in the damp darkness as the soldiers entered the village in their trucks and armored cars The trucks stopped in the village's only plaza and the troops jumped to the ground These were not Peace Enforcers, they were troops from the capital Their uniforms were ugly brown battle dress and they carried automatic rifles, deadly looking with their curved magazines and flash suppressors on their muzzles.
Paulmo watched as two of the armored cars sped down the road after the Frenchman's truck Watched as a squad of troops raced straight to the old stone barn, kicked in the door, and tossed in half a dozen grenades The ancient stone walls held, but the explosions blew out the roof and started a fire that sent oily black smoke bubbling into the pristine sky.
Then the soldiers went to every house and pulled out every person Truckloads of soldiers trundled out into the fields and rounded up the men working there Paulino watched in sickening shame as the fields went up in smoke, the yellow tractors were blown to pieces, and a dozen of the elder men of the village put against a wall and shot before the horrified eyes of the whole village One of the old men was Pauline's father.
Then the looting began And the raping Paulino cried bitterly and clawed at the grass until his fingertips bled It was all his fault He had brought this destruction down upon the village just as his father had warned.
But he did not move from the safety of his cave until long after dark night had fallen and the soldiers had left the wailing, bloody, burning, sorrowful village