Chapter 1: The Stage Is Set

It was supposed to be one of those lazy Saturday mornings when nothing got done, nobody showed up for work and everybody was just marking time for the party to start at the Marine bar after the sun set on the Western horizon.

The hard-working section in the Consulate that processed student and work visas for the foreign visitors was typing, filing, and stamping documents needed for international travel. However, most of the workers in that section were local hires and they were used to working on Saturdays which they considered part of the work-week. The spoiled American workers seldom showed up for work on Saturday morning because they considered the requirement to be far too demanding on their free time in the low priority Embassy in a low priority country in a part of the world that many saw as unimportant in the overall scheme of things in current affairs.

In fact, the Ambassador had not even been replaced yet and the Charge d'affaires was far too busy with arranging a dinner party for the Brazilian Ambassador to tend to the day to day business of the Embassy. The entire operation was being looked after by the General Services Officer who was the senior professional Embassy staff member and with impressive connections in Washington, D.C.

The previous night's party at the Marine Bar was one of those bring a bottle and drink all you want affairs that often resulted in drunken behavior even by normally respectable folks. The wife of the Chief Canadian Engineer overseeing the dam construction under EU and NATO sanctions had left her children at home under the care of a local nanny and let her hair down whilst her spouse was toiling away in the valley where the dam was being constructed by hordes of foreign workers imported from North Africa and Turkey. The simple truth was that the local workers were uninterested in working for the base salary paid by the International Consortium that generally used cheaper labor from economically depressed countries with unemployed labor problems.

The Canadian woman's name was Florence and she tended to stutter when she was excited or had too much to drink. Her precocious children liked to make fun of her behind her back but without rancor when she fell into such a state but she never really appreciated that fact the longest time.

Florence Cunningham was one of those creatures who seemed a bit gawky or uncoordinated but when she was in a bathing suit and diving from way up high she was like a beautiful swan with perfect symmetry. She had even made it all the way to the Canadian Olympic team but twisted her ankle before the finals and had to withdraw. Still, it was a highlight of her early life and she often wondered if she should have continued and tried again four years later. Now, with two young children and a husband to tend, she didn't think it would be possible to return to her past glory.

She was a favorite of all the Marines because even though she wasn't a US citizen, she was from a country about as close as you can get and she even sounded like an American just like them.

It was Sergeant Wilson who got Florence all tanked up on the Russian vodka that he was able to take onboard without any problem because he was used to the original "hard" stuff from the mountains of West Virginia. The poor lady from north of the border was not any competition to him in a drinking contest and she was lucky they found a spare bedroom for her to sleep it off with some shreds of dignity still intact. The General Services Officer's secretary, Miss Honeyplenty was able to get her into the horizontal without showing too much leg and only a short glimpse of her red thong that made her look a lot younger and more unattached than an old married lady.

Miss Honeyplenty's orange-tinged curly hair looked a trifle odd but her face was first rate cutie-pie and her figure made her likely to get promoted fast on foreign assignment. A lot of the visiting dignitaries from the States were given special attention from Doreen Honeyplenty's availability calendar and they all gave her high marks for dedicated service. She was a constant customer of the Marine bar when they were having a party or even when they were not. Doreen was not by any sense of the imagination a slut but she certainly was about as flirtatious as you would expect to meet inside the ranks of the Embassy staff. She was one of the few female professional staff who was able to match drinks with the likes of Sergeant Wilson and her expertise came from years of practice at parties on the Washington, D.C. circuit on Embassy Row.

The Gunny in charge of the detachment was seconded to an alternate location because of the demands of a Human Rights Conference but Sergeant Wilson was able to keep things together in his absence even when he was off duty and tricking wayward females into matching him drink for drink. He was drinking some thick local coffee now and would be soon sober enough to check the security on the perimeter of the compound. They only had a small detachment and in fact the Human Rights component had more personnel than the Embassy itself.

The GSO thanked his secretary for her aid in taking care of the Canadian wife's drinking problem and she assured him in a low whisper that she would be available for his visit later that evening after the party was over. It was common knowledge that Doreen was putting out to her boss but like most similar situations, no one mentioned it in mixed company. The GSO was the most powerful man on the Embassy staff and nobody dared to challenge his authority.

At the end of the bar, the Regional Security Officer (RSO) was slowly sipping his Scotch and water happily watching the interplay between the Embassy staff, the Marines and the local employees. It was a typical crowd with more females than males and the wives were flirting with any male with the slightest glimmer of interest in feminine assets.

The young and inexperienced Marines were chasing the pretty young things who were just interested in a free ticket out of the country. The wives were willing to settle for anything providing they were discreet and polite about it.