army attaché has an airplane, an L-23, at his disposal,” Felter said. “Would you have any objection, General, if Jacques and Major Lunsford were to fly there using it?”
Mobutu thought that over before replying.
“Would there be room for Dr. Dannelly and one of my aides?”
“Sure,” Jack said.
Why is he sending Dannelly? So that he can report back what Supo said? His aide could do that. Maybe, even probably, to tell Supo that he really has the power to say no.
“Tomorrow morning?” Mobutu asked. “Say, eight o’clock at the airport.”
Felter nodded.
“Then it is done,” Mobutu said. “And we can have our lunch.”
He started to get up from the table.
“Sit there, Joseph,” Jean-Philippe Portet said. “I’ll sit here.”
He sat at the other end of the table.
Jack started to reach for his beer, when he saw that Dr. Dannelly’s head was bowed in prayer. With a quick look at Mr. Finton, he saw that he was also praying a silent grace, which didn’t surprise him. But then he glanced at Mobutu, wondering if Mobutu would honor the praying of the others.
One hand on his beer bottle, the chief of staff of the Congolese Army had his head bowed in prayer, too.
XII
[ ONE ]
The Residence of the Ambassador of the United States
Léopoldville, Republic of the Congo
1845 16 January 1965
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. Ambassador, ” Colonel Aaron Jacobs said as he walked into the ambassador’s study. Another man, also in civilian clothing, followed him into the room.
Jacobs was a tall, muscular man who wore his hair in a crew cut. The ambassador was tall and thin and wore rimless spectacles. A pleasant-looking man in his thirties, who looked as if he had played baseball, not football, in college sat in a leather armchair, a drink in his hand.
“Anytime, Aaron,” the ambassador said, smiling. “You know that. Should I run the CIA away, or is he cleared for whatever you want to say?”
“I thought those fellows were cleared for everything,” Jacobs said. “How are you, Charley?”
“Aaron. Hey, John,” the CIA Léopoldville station chief replied.
The CIA station chief knew Major John D. Anderson, one of the assistant military attachés, well. Anderson, a tanned, lithe man in his early thirties, was an assistant military attaché. He was the senior of the two army aviators assigned to the embassy, and thought of as “the embassy pilot.”
“Charley,” Anderson said.
“What’s on your mind, Aaron?” the ambassador asked.
“I just had a call from Mr. . . . Colonel . . . Felter,” Jacobs said.
“We were just talking about him,” the CIA station chief said.
“He wants to go to Stanleyville and/or Costersmanville tomorrow morning,” Jacobs said. “In our airplane.”
“Did he say why?” Charley, the CIA station chief, asked.
“Uh-uh. What he said was that he wanted to go to Stanleyville and/or Costersmanville tomorrow morning, and would I make sure the airplane was ready at half past seven.”
“And you said?” the ambassador asked.
“That you, Mr. Ambassador—I didn’t mention you, Charley—were planning to go to Bujumbura, and that I didn’t think you would have any problem with dropping him off at Bujumbura, that it’s not at all far from Costersmanville.”
“And he said?”
“He said that he was sorry but he was going to need the airplane for two or three days, and that there wouldn’t be room to take you along, Mr. Ambassador.”
“The sonofabitch!” Charley said.
“He’s blessed by Lyndon himself,” the ambassador said. “You saw the message—‘milattache is directed to provide whatever he requires, which specifically includes use of aircraft’—or words to that effect. So fly him to wherever he wants to go, Aaron. And try to smile.”
“Sir, I’m not sure about this—it was only after he hung up that the hairs on my neck started to rise—but I’m not sure he wants me to fly the aircraft.”
“Who would fly it?”
“Well, he’s staying with Captain Portet, I saw him at the airport. With his son and two other people,” Jacobs said.
“The son’s in the Army, right?” Charley asked, but it was a statement. “The long arm of the draft board caught up with him way over here in Darkest Africa.”
“He’s a pilot,” the ambassador said. “He’s a nice kid, who suffers from erectis permanitis.” He waited for the expected chuckle, then went on. “Do you think he’s going to fly it?”
“He couldn’t be an Army aviator, Mr. Ambassador,” Major Anderson said.
“Why not?”
“He was drafted a year ago,” Colonel Jacobs answered for him. “That means he was an enlisted man. Three months in basic training, then six in Officer Candidate School. Flight