First and foremost, this is a novel--an invented story. Alluvial Reflections came about in the most interesting way.

The final session of my "Fundamentals of Fiction Writing" course involved an assignment to write a short piece of fiction (3,000 words) on the Cold War that dominated the political, cultural, and social landscape of the second half of the twentieth century.

The story was to explore some of the ways in which the U.S. and the USSR affected life in various parts of the world before the collapse of the Soviet Union. In particular, we were to focus on two facets of the Cold War: (1) the cultural, political, and diplomatic climate of the Cold War; and (2) intelligence and espionage.

This assignment required us to do considerable research on the period--to read about the Cold War, to study the intelligence "wars" of that time (CIA versus KGB), to analyze important primary sources, including novels, magazine articles, and "classified" government documents.

Using these raw materials, we were to create a protagonist and an antagonist. Before we embarked on this exciting assignment the professor said: "Write the story as if you were Robert Ludlum. Visualize the thinking of the CIA and the KGB--manage their manners and attitudes, and always look out for the skunk along the way. The story must be chillingly prescient, but must also portray loyalty, honor, and love that transcend the conflict. After your first draft, read it from beginning to end and feel as though you'd just made a xylophone."

As I researched, I discovered that in the 1960s, as the British Empire began to crumble and hand over the colonies to the indigenous peoples, the Soviet Union and the United States moved in and turned the African savannahs into a battlefield for their Cold War.

They brought with them their "ideological guns" and held them to the heads of some of the finest African leaders. These leaders, who were neither communists nor capitalists, but gifted politicians who were determined to guide Africa toward an independent and democratic future, were influenced and manipulated, and those found "undesirable" were overthrown or assassinated.

Soon the Cold War powers would plague African nations with a string of military coups and civil wars that would produce some of the most ruthless leaders and rebels that had ever been seen on the continent.

The rise of rebel groups has resulted in banditry and horrific brutal armed conflicts. In some of the diamond-producing African countries, diamonds have been linked to terrible human rights abuses by unscrupulous political leaders and rebel groups who have found them a perfect currency with which to buy arms and fuel more conflicts.

The terror the CIA and the KGB have created, and the destruction corrupt African leaders and rebel groups continue to cause, is portrayed in the novel in the form of fiction.

Several well-known public figures from the recent past, not all of them dead, make brief appearances in this book under their real names, as they might have if my story had been true. But the story is entirely my own creation, and all the characters-real and imagined alike-have been used fictitiously, without any intent to describe the actual conduct of any person.

I wish to emphasize again that this is above all a novel. The impact of one set of historical facts on another involves my own deduction and surmise. Conversations among the fiction characters, and many of the internal motivations laid out in the novel that drive historically known decisions, are the product of my imagination. And all the characters, other than well-known historical figures who inhibit these pages, are fictional.