The Foreign Service Journal, April 2008

continued day and night, without letup. My parents could not sleep, and Father, in particular, began suf- fering from sleep deprivation. One morning, African men in suits entered the embassy. They stood silently in the chancery, looking around. Father arrived, and asked if he could help them. The men ignored him, looked around some more, and left without a word. The next day, one of the embassy’s three African employees failed to show up for work. The other two disappeared during the following two days. Their relatives called my father, begging him to do something. The FSNs had been arrested. Two more nationals worked at the chargé’s residence, a cook and a chauffeur. They were also arrested. The police took the cook, a woman whommy parents considered a friend as well as an employee, across the street to the courtyard in front of the prison. They removed her clothes and staked her to the ground, in full view of the residence. They then pro- ceeded to strip the skin from her body. The woman screamed for two days before she finally died. Father repeatedly sent cables to Washington, asking for help. The re- sponses from State were equivocal. He lodged protests with the 20-year- old chief of protocol, who did not respond at all. The U.S. ambassador in Yaoundé was on home leave; Father was on his own. His hands began to shake so badly that he, a smoker, could not light his own cigarettes. Macias announced that the nation was facing imminent invasion by an “imperialist power” and its “white mercenaries.” They were trying to kill him, he said, but he would kill them. Father started behaving oddly. He began sending cables to Washington, at the highest encryption level, warn- ing of communist conspiracies and the danger to the United States. 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 8