Russian Spring (35 page)

Bobby had gotten to the mail first this morning, as he had been doing for two weeks in anticipation, and when he finally saw the letter from the American Embassy, he pocketed it before anyone else saw it, for he knew that he would be forbidden to go down to the Embassy to pick up his passport if he was foolish enough to ask permission.

Everything else was set. He had been admitted to both
UCLA
and Berkeley, and since both were part of the California State University system, he had managed to bullshit them into giving him till August 25th to decide between them. He had an Air India ticket to New York for a week from Friday, and he even had a two-month prebought Air America travel card good for standby on all internal American carriers.

So he was not about to let the last detail hang in the air until his parents thought it was safe for him to go to the American Embassy, whenever that might be, if ever. Mom was already making noises about how maybe this might not be a good time to go to America,
and he wasn’t about to give her the chance to stop him by claiming it was too dangerous to pick up his passport until the departure date had passed.

He simply waited around till two o’clock, when Franja finally went out and left him alone in the apartment, and then took the Métro to the Place de la Concorde. Once he came back with the passport, he could just play innocent. If he never dreamed he had to ask for permission to do such a simple thing, Mom could hardly contend that he had disobeyed her, and even if she did, well, he would already have what he needed, now wouldn’t he?

Bobby was not about to let a bunch of stupid demonstrations keep him from picking up the necessary papers, and from the scene inside the compound, it seemed that no other American still remaining in Paris had been scared away either.

The place was bedlam. The yard outside the passport office was mobbed with people, some of them actually lugging suitcases, demanding protection, demanding asylum, demanding to see the Ambassador or the commercial attaché, venting their spleen at the French, at the American government, at the Marines who body-frisked them, at each other, at the clerks trying to form them up into a line, all at the top of their lungs, and all at once.

It took Bobby at least an hour to get into the building, another hour on another line to exchange his letter for some kind of stupid authorization form, and then two hours on yet a third line before he could exchange
that
for his precious passport.

By then it was nearly seven o’clock, he was going to be late for dinner, Mom and Dad would already be home, and they had probably already stopped being worried and become furious. But at least he
did
have what he had come here for.

In a truly foul mood by now himself, fatigued by the endless waiting, irritated by the snarling mob scenes, and more than a little worried by what he was likely to catch when he finally got home, Bobby kneed and elbowed his way past the people clogging the temporary passport office, and out into the courtyard.

Something was very wrong.

There was a crowd of people clustered around the compound gate peering out through the heavy iron bars, and the gate was shut, with two Marine guards backed against it with their M-86s at port arms. There were more Marines inside the wall manning the remote control consoles wired to the neuronic disrupters atop it.

And then Bobby noticed what he had been hearing all along.

There was an immense roaring tumult coming from the other side of the wall, and the ragged rhythmic stamping of massed feet. Behind this, like the vocal track of a max-metal cut badly mixed to overemphasize
the bass line, he could barely distinguish the words of the chant.

“
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
”

Bobby shoved his way to the front of the mob around the gate, and what he saw through the bars made his stomach drop and his knees tremble.

The entire park across from the Embassy was clogged with people, all the way from the Champs-Élysées to the gutter of Avenue Gabriel, where the mounted Garde Républicain troops cordoned the mob off from the American Marines.

A sea of pumping fists and screaming mouths and reddened pop-eyed faces. An Uncle Sam effigy with a death’s-head face hanging by a noose from a rude gibbet. An American flag on a pole, burning above the mob. A section of a long lettered banner he could not make out. Another banner that was a crude blowup of a thousand-dollar bill, smeared with blood and shit.

“
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
”

Bobby had seen anti-American demonstrations before; indeed he had once marched in them himself. But he had never felt anything like the wave of hate washing over the Embassy wall. It went beyond politics, beyond economics, beyond rationality. It was an outpouring of animal rage.

“
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
”

Bobby was afraid. Bobby was ashamed. Doubly ashamed—for America, and for the fantasy vision that flashed unbidden through his mind, an image of the American Marines firing into that sea of angry people, blowing the nightmare away with massed automatic-weapons fire.

“
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
AMER-I-
CAN
, AS-SAS-
SAN!
”

And then a glob of something came sailing in a lazy arc over the wall and smacked up against the Embassy building, smearing the gray stone with a patch of brown. And another, falling just short and impacting in the courtyard in splatters of blood and turds.

A Marine sergeant came dashing up to the guards at the gate, yelling something Bobby couldn’t make out. “Cocksuckers!” one of the gate guards shouted loud and clear.

More boluses of shit and blood came sailing over the wall to splatter the Embassy. And then, for some reason, a great cheer went up from the mob outside, and a massed fusillade of ordure flew over the wall toward the building.

A moment later Bobby saw why.

The gate guards had leveled their M-86s at the mob outside. “Clear the gate! Clear the gate!” one of them shouted. There was a clatter of horses’ hooves on concrete. Marines within the Embassy compound began herding the crowd around the entrance away from the gate, and being none too gentle about it.

Bobby had just a glimpse of what was happening before a black Marine yanked him backward away from the gate by the shoulders.

The Garde Républicain horsemen were trotting their mounts up onto the near sidewalk and down the street to the left. They were leaving the Embassy to the mob. There was nothing between the wall and the mob now but the cordon of M-86-toting Marines. . . .

Oh no, Bobby thought, they’re going to have to fire into the crowd! He didn’t know who he loathed more in that moment—the Americans who were about to gun down unarmed people, or the fucking flics who had deliberately provoked them into doing it by leaving.

But it didn’t happen.

Instead what happened was something that, at least for the moment, made Bobby proud to be an American.

If the French had pulled the Garde Républicain in order to provoke an American atrocity, the Americans weren’t biting.

The gate swung open, and two lines of Marines came double-timing through it rapidly but in orderly file, their weapons leveled at the mob to hold it back, but not firing. The Marines were withdrawing into the compound.

It took only a minute at most to accomplish the maneuver. Then the gate guards withdrew, slammed the gate shut, and threw a switch beside it.

With a triumphant roar, the mob surged forward to press against the bars—

—and reeled backward, staggering and screaming from the pain of the electric shock.

There was total chaos within the compound. The civilians were dashing reflexively away from the wall as the roaring mob pressed up against it, and a squad of Marines formed up in front of the gate with their M-86s leveled just in case. Some of the civilians were making for the safety of the Embassy building itself, but another squad of Marines had formed up in front of the entrance to block them.

Fusillades of shit and blood splattered against the façade of the Embassy and rained down into the courtyard. Bobby stood there transfixed in the middle of it all, not knowing what to do or where to run to, just trying to keep from being knocked off his feet by the panicked people running around in circles to no purpose.

“Look out!” someone shouted behind him.

Bobby turned toward the voice, but he turned the wrong way, and besides, it was too late. As he turned, something heavy and wet hit him on the left shoulder, splattering into his hair and onto his left cheek. He staggered, almost fell, righted himself, looked down at his windbreaker, saw it, smelled it, gagged, and vomited all over his shoes.

The left side of his jacket was smeared with a congealing mess of thick red blood and half-dissolved brown shit. The stuff was in his hair and splattered all over his face. Spatters of it were all over his pants.

He retched again, tore off the jacket, used the more-or-less clean part to wipe his face and neck, then toweled furiously at his hair, and tossed it away.

Blood and shit continued to smash against the Embassy building and pour down out of the sky into the courtyard. People were running around screaming. And, Bobby numbly realized, empty wine bottles and stones and bricks were now coming in over the wall too. . . .

“
ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTEN-
SHUN!
” a great amplified voice shouted out above the chaos.

A black Marine officer had emerged from the building and stood at the Embassy entrance shouting into a bullhorn cranked up to maximum volume. “
WE ARE GOING TO NEURONIC DISRUPTERS! WE ARE GOING TO NEURONIC DISRUPTERS! MARINES, INSERT YOUR PLUGS! CIVILIANS, BACK UP AGAINST THE BUILDING AND PRESS YOUR THUMBS IN YOUR EARS!
”

Bobby forgot the blood and shit that was still splattered all over his pants and the puke drying on his shoes in his haste to get as far away from the wall and the disrupters as possible. He had never experienced a neuronic disrupter, but he, and everyone else crowding back up against the Embassy building, knew full well what was about to happen.

The neuronic disrupter cranked out a high volume of carefully chosen subsonic and ultrasonic frequencies that did extremely unpleasant things to the human nervous system. It stimulated a somatic panic response. It made it literally impossible to think. It vibrated the skull and the auditory apparatus to create one killer of an instant migraine. It loosened sphincter muscles, destroying bowel and bladder control.

It was the crowd-control weapon of choice of the American forces in Latin America, touted as noninjurious and humane by the United States, reviled as outrage against human dignity by the European media, who loved to show images of hapless Latin Americans clutching their guts, holding their heads, and shrieking in agony like animals.

Bobby himself had often enough shared in the conventional outrage,
but now, terrified, infuriated, reeking of blood and shit and vomit, with his back up against the wall of his Embassy and his thumbs pressed tightly in his ears, it was another story.

“
ACTIVATE NEURONIC DISRUPTERS!
”

The disrupters were directional, but some backwash was inevitable, and even with his thumbs pressed tightly in his ears, Bobby felt a horrible vibration, as if a miniature jackhammer were at work on the top of his head. He found himself pressing harder and harder back against the building wall, fighting the urge to break and run. His bowels felt like shimmering jelly, and it took an enormous effort to keep from pissing in his pants.

It couldn’t have gone on for more than five minutes, but it felt like hours. People around him fell to their knees. Some of them had wet stains about their crotches. What was going on on the other side of the wall, where the mob was getting it full blast, was difficult to imagine.

“
DEACTIVATE NEURONIC DISRUPTERS!
”

And all at once it was over.

The headache pain was gone, as was the urge to flee to nowhere in particular. His bowels firmed up, and he no longer had the overwhelming urge to piss.

And there was a strange hushed silence. No more mob noises. No more ordure and missiles sailing over the wall. People stood around numbly, smeared with filth, stealing sidelong glances at each other.

A Marine guard deactivated the charge on the gate. A sergeant formed up two neat lines of troops. The gate was opened, and the two files of Marines trotted out through it to reestablish their cordon.

“
IT IS NOW SAFE TO LEAVE THE COMPOUND,
” the Marine officer said through his bullhorn. “
PLEASE DO SO IN AN ORDERLY FASHION. REMEMBER—YOU ARE
AMERICANS
.
”

And indeed, people who a few moments before had been running around and screaming in panic dutifully and politely formed themselves up into a rough triple line and filed out through the open gate quietly, without any pushing or shoving.

Bobby stood there in the street for a moment, surveying the wreckage and trying to sort out his feelings.

The gutter and the sidewalks were littered with debris—placards, banners, throwing sticks, overturned buckets of blood and shit, an Uncle Sam effigy that had been trampled underfoot, puddles of piss, rocks, bricks, broken bottles.

He shuddered as he imagined what it must have been like out here only a few minutes ago, thousands of people clutching their aching heads, shitting and pissing in their pants, fleeing in animal panic, just
like the Latin Americans he had seen scores of times on television.

He crossed the street and began walking toward the Place de la Concorde Métro stop, past the line of Marine guards, who stood staring stony-faced straight ahead, at ease with their M-86s slung on their shoulders.

He paused. He looked up and behind him at the façade of the American Embassy.