“How did it get there?” the deputy director asked with a smile.
“Multiple choice,” O’Connor said. “Carelessness, stupidity, incompetence, or all of the above.”
The deputy director smiled again, and wiggled his fingers in a sign for O’Connor to go on.
“What are we talking about?”
“Intercontinental Air Cargo.”
“The last I heard about that is that you’d found the guy you wanted to run it, and Gresham Investments was about to make him an offer.”
“That’s right.”
“But there has been a bump on the road, I gather?”
“The guy they—which means me, Paul, I’m the deputy director for administration, I’m responsible—the guy I came up with is Captain Jean-Phillipe Portet.”
“So you told me. And cutting to the chase?”
“Che Guevara and Colonel Sanford T. Felter,” O’Connor said. “I am, as you know, reporting on Guevara’s whereabouts to Felter. . . .”
“I took that call from President Johnson myself,” the deputy director said. “What’s it got to do with this?”
“Felter has an operation going called Operation Earnest, the purpose of which is to stop Guevara in the Congo.”
“We’re off on a tangent, aren’t we?”
“I’m beginning to think that Felter may be onto something. Guevara’s been all over Africa. You know that.”
“I still don’t think he’s going to try anything in the Congo; all he’s doing is public relations.”
“I suppose you’ve read the unconfirmeds from Havana that they’re recruiting black troops for an international peace force?”
“I have, always keeping in mind the operative word is ‘unconfirmed. ’ ”
“Felter has just come back from the Congo. He went there to change Mobutu’s mind about no American troops in the Congo. . . .”
“Don’t tell me he was successful?”
“He got General Mobutu to agree to take a small team of Special Forces types. He’s already got people training at Bragg to go over there. You know what—more precisely, who—changed his mind?”
“Go on.”
“Captain Jean-Philippe Portet.”
“How did he get involved?”
“It gets worse. Portet’s son, I have just found out, is a Green Beret lieutenant assigned to Operation Earnest.”
“Felter’s operation, right?”
O’Connor nodded. “Father and son went to the Congo with Felter, and now Mobutu’s letting a Special Forces team in to deal with Guevara.”
“How ‘deal’?”
“Felter thinks he should be frustrated, humiliated, not terminated. ”
“I don’t think I agree.”
“The President does. Felter also sent a light colonel named Lowell to Argentina to talk the Argentines out of eliminating Guevara.”
“They’ll have a hard time doing that, fortunately. When the Argentines, in their own good time, take out one of their own named Guevara, it will solve a lot of our problems.”
“This Colonel Lowell is an interesting chap. . . .”
“I’ve heard the name.”
“His father-in-law is General von Greiffenberg.”
“That is interesting.”
“Felter is about to send a small Army airplane down there and a couple of ex-Cuban Army officers now in Special Forces to work with the Argentines. That wouldn’t be happening if the Argentines weren’t going along.”
"Damn!”
“And guess who’s flying the airplane down there? Young Lieutenant Portet.”
“How good is your information, Howard?”
“Five all the way. State routinely gets copies of orders sending Army officers out of the country not in connection with a troop movement. And of augmentation to defense attaché staffs. I have a friend over there. They’re as unhappy with Felter as we are.”
“Unfortunately, President Johnson is happy with him.”
“We have to consider that Felter is entirely capable of dropping into one of their private conversations that we’re setting up young Portet’s daddy in a covert airline.”
“What’s young Portet got to do with the President?”
“When the Belgians parachuted into Stanleyville, one of them was young Portet in a Belgian uniform. The King of the Belgians, and Mobutu, are giving him medals. The President thinks young Portet is the all-American boy of fame and legend.”
“That goddamn Felter has his nose in everything,” the deputy director said.
“The conversation I don’t want to take place is as follows,” O’Connor said. “Felter: The Agency is bankrolling another Air America-type airline. Maybe this one they can keep secret. Johnson: How do you know that? Felter: The front man is young Portet’s father. Chuckle, chuckle. They don’t know I know, or who Captain Portet is.”
“Shit,” the deputy director said bitterly. “You’re right, Howard, you should have known about the Portets, pere et fils.”
“The last word I had was that the son was a draftee private taking basic training, and his stepmother and half sister had just been rescued from Stanleyville.”
“I thought you just said he was an officer?”
“When he came back from the Congo, they commissioned him,” O’Connor said.