The Assignment

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The car was a 1937 eight-cylinder Packard. It was black, like the soldiers’ uniforms and the American motorcycles in the escort. The time was three minutes past eight in the morning, and it was already very hot. The two people in the back of the car were talking.

"Father, are you never afraid?"

"What is there to be afraid of, my dear?"

"All these people …"

"Barking dogs don’t bite. You must remember one thing: always rely on the army-it is the only stable force here-as long as it has the right leaders. You ought to have had time to learn that by now."

"Why don’t you forbid the servants to read the leaflets they drop?"

"What difference would that make?"

A silence fell in the car. The General turned his head and looked at the white villas rushing by without really seeing them. The convoy cut its way down through the long steep bends and onto a level road covered with gray-white stone chippings. The engineer corps had constructed it three years earlier and it was still usable although the edges had begun to crumble. At the foot of the hill the artificially irrigated area came to an end, the escort sounded their sirens and swung out into the wide, cobblestoned main street which ran dead straight from north to south through the capital of the province.

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