what you haven’t learned is when to quit. When the cards are running against you, you have to take what you’ve got left, and get up from the table. That leaves you with a stake for the next time you sit down to play.”
That’s what the old man is doing here, knowing when to quit, and walking away from this game with a stake—maybe a little one, but a stake—to play again, this time with the CIA.
Dr. Dannelly and Mr. Finton came out of the house a few minutes later.
“About ready for lunch, Joseph?” Captain Portet asked. “And where would you like to eat? Here, or in the house?”
Mobutu didn’t reply.
Finton came off the patio and walked toward them; Dr. Dannelly stayed on the patio.
Mobutu, without a word, got up and walked across the lawn to the house, then followed Dannelly inside.
“Noki,” Captain Portet called out in Swahili. “Lunch, here, whenever you’re ready.”
Noki and Nimbi had just finished setting a table when Dannelly and Mobutu came out of the house.
With Dannelly following him, Mobutu walked directly across the lawn to the luncheon table and sat down at the head of it. Dannelly sat down beside him. Mobutu signaled for Noki to get him a beer, then smiled and waved at Father Lunsford, Felter, Finton, and the Portets to join him.
Jean-Philippe Portet thought: The first time Joseph Désiré Mobutu sat at my table, he was genuinely surprised at the invitation, and was made uneasy by the choices he was going to have to make between three forks, three spoons, and two knives. And I told him what my father had told me—if you don’t know which fork to use, watch your host—and he was grateful.
But of course, he was then Sergeant Major Mobutu of the Force Publique, and he’s now Lieutenant General Mobutu, chief of staff of the Congolese Army. Now he sits at the head of my table—any table in the Congo—and doesn’t have to worry about his manners.
“Sit by me, Major,” Mobutu said to Lunsford, pointing to the chair across from Dannelly.
“And where would you have me sit, Joseph?” Captain Portet asked.
Mobutu looked at him coldly, but then smiled.
“Am I in your chair, Jean-Philippe?” he asked.
“If you are at my table as my old friend, you are,” Captain Portet said. “If you are sitting there as chief of staff of the Congolese Army, you’re not. The chief of staff, like a 250-kilo gorilla, can sit wherever he wants to.”
A look of alarm—My God, is Portet going to make Mobutu angry now?—flickered across Felter’s usually unreadable face.
Mobutu smiled, but there was no telling what the smile meant.
“In that case, let me say something to Colonel Felter as one soldier to another,” Mobutu said. “And then we can have our lunch.”
He looked at Dannelly, then at Felter.
“Your ambassador—I mentioned his French leaves something to be desired—apparently did not make it clear to President Kasavubu what he was proposing,” Mobutu said. “He gave him the impression the U.S. government wanted to send troops here. That’s obviously out of the question, and Kasavubu told him so. The Congolese Army is perfectly capable of dealing with the present emergency, and any emergency in the future, including the Cuban Guevara. That is not to say the Congolese Army might not find it useful to have the assistance, in a purely training capacity, of someone with the expertise of Major Lunsford, and with several caveats, I have no problem with that.”
“What are the caveats, General?” Felter asked.
“First, that it not appear that President Kasavubu has changed his mind. He is a strong-willed man, who—as you well know, Jean-Philippe—has great difficulty admitting he has ever made a mistake.”
“So, unfortunately, we are going to have to keep this purely military decision from him, you understand?”
“Yes, of course,” Felter said.
“That may be putting the cart in front of the horse. I would decide that your trainers, Colonel Felter, would be of use to the Congolese Army only if Colonel Supo agrees that they would be of use to him—”
“Colonel Supo?” Felter interrupted.
“He’s in charge of cleaning out the remaining insurgents in Oriental, Equatorial, and Kivu Provinces,” Mobutu said. “He’s already met Major Lunsford and Jacques. And second, it has to be clearly understood that your people would serve at Colonel Supo’s orders, and only at his pleasure.”
“Agreed,” Felter said immediately.
“Then I suggest that Major Lunsford and Jacques meet with Colonel Supo as soon as possible,” Mobutu said. “He’s in Stanleyville, or perhaps Costersmanville.”