“Permission to withdraw, Mr. President?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you when you can, Colonel,” Lyndon Johnson said sharply.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your uniform looks like you slept in it, Colonel,” Johnson said.
“Yes, sir, I did,” Lowell said.
“You just flew up here from Buenos Aires?”
“Yes, sir.”
Johnson turned to Lunsford.
“You were with him, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I heard that Lowell was down there with another guy; they didn’t have your name. What the hell were you doing down there?”
Lunsford looked uncomfortable, as if he was phrasing his reply.
“You can tell me,” Johnson said sarcastically. “I’m the President. ”
“Sir, we were seeking the cooperation of the Argentine government with regard to Che Guevara,” Lunsford said.
“The last I heard, Colonel Felter,” Johnson said, looking at him, “we have an ambassador down there who’s paid to deal with the Argentine government.”
“I’m afraid Major Lunsford misspoke, Mr. President,” Felter said. “Colonel Lowell and Major Lunsford met, unofficially, with General Pistarini.”
"Who’s he?”
“Commander-in-chief of the Argentine Army, sir.”
“Doesn’t the chief of the Army down there take his orders from the President?”
“In a manner of speaking, Mr. President, President Illia of Argentina serves at the pleasure of General Pistarini,” Felter said.
“He’s another Perón, in other words?”
“No, sir,” Felter said. “From what I know of him, and from what Colonel Lowell and Major Lunsford have been telling me about him, he is not at all like Juan Perón.”
“In what way different?” Johnson asked.
“For one thing, if he considers a coup to remove President Illia necessary in the best interests of Argentina, he will order the coup with great personal reluctance, and appoint someone else—probably General Ongania—to the presidency. Perón, on the other hand, would like to be president for the sake of Juan Perón.”
Johnson turned to Lowell.
“You talked to this guy—Pistarini, you said?—and he told you this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“It was in the wee hours of the morning, Mr. President, and we’d all had a good deal to drink.”
“You were drinking with this Pistarini at three, four o’clock in the morning?” Johnson parroted wonderingly. He chuckled. “You got along with him pretty good, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” Lowell said, and then blurted, “It was all I could do to keep him from giving me a medal.”
“Why would he want to do that?” Johnson asked.
“That was never made clear, sir,” Lowell said. “But at three o’clock in the morning, General Pistarini seemed to think that decorating both Major Lunsford and myself was a splendid idea.”
Johnson shook his head and smiled.
“You know, every time I go south of Brownsville, I see all these Latin American generals marching around, covered from eyeball to belly button with medals, and I know most—maybe none—of them never heard a shot fired in anger.”
“I’ve noticed, sir,” Lowell said.
“Why didn’t you take it?” Johnson asked.
“I was under orders to maintain as low a profile as possible, sir.”
“Your low profile didn’t escape the attention of the secretary of state, Colonel. He thinks you two were pissing on his grass.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“Before you and he hit the bottle, how was this Pistarini planning on dealing with Señor Guevara?”
“He was not to be allowed to enter Argentina alive, Mr. President, ” Lowell said. “And General Pistarini told me that should Dr. Guevara meet an accident anywhere, not only would he not be unhappy, but also that the accident would be investigated by the Argentine intelligence service—it’s called SIDE—who would find, and announce, that they had found absolutely nothing suspicious about it.”
“And after you’d had a couple of belts?”
“He and the man who runs SIDE became convinced that your feeling that Guevara should be kept alive and allowed to fall on his face was in everybody’s best interests.”
“Can we do that, Lunsford?” the President asked. “Make the sonofabitch fall on his face in the Congo?”
“Yes, sir. I think we can. I’m building a pretty capable team at Fort Bragg.”
“Did Colonel Felter make it clear to you that nobody can find out we’re involved?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You think—all three of you—that this Pistarini character can be trusted?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Lunsford said, and then Felter and Lowell chimed in simultaneously with the same reply.
“Okay. That’s it,” Johnson said. “If the secretary of state is still waiting outside the Oval Office, and I know goddamned well he will be, I’ll tell him what I told the Joint Chiefs Chairman yesterday. ”
He looked at Felter.
“Which is, Mr. President?” Felter asked.
“That I know all about what you’re doing for me, that they’re to give you anything you ask for, and that I don’t want to talk about