Eugenia Charles

摘要

The press photographs did no justice to how Eugenia Charles felt as she stood beside Ronald Reagan, at the White House, in October 1983. They showed a rather grim and melancholy woman, in a white cravat and executive striped suit. Only a vestigial twinkle in Reagan's eye suggested the truth: that Miss Charles was having the time of her life. "Mr President," she told him afterwards in her lilting basso pro-fundo, "you have big balls!" She had just invited him to invade Grenada, and he had done so secretly, at once. That island, in the same chain as her own state of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean, had been taken over by Cuban-backed thugs and the moderate prime minister murdered. Miss Charles had raised the spectre of Cuban infiltration all over the region; Reagan, ever ready to wage clandestine war against Commies, had gallantly responded. A navy flotilla with marines had been diverted from its voyage to Lebanon to carry out her wishes and liberate the island. This was power.