up and said I obviously didn’t understand the situation, Peters was essential to the White House Signal Agency, and I just couldn’t have him. I told him I had the priority, and wanted him. He said, ‘Colonel, not as a threat, as a statement of fact, I’m going over your head with this one.’ ”
“Obviously,” Hanrahan said, chuckling, “he wasn’t familiar with your chain of command.”
“I don’t think he was,” Felter said, smiling. “And I don’t know if General Sawyer actually went to President Johnson, but the day before Peters came down here, he showed up at my office— it was the first time I’d ever seen him in a uniform—came to attention and saluted, and said he was reporting for duty. Then he started worrying that he wouldn’t measure up to being around Green Berets. I assured him he didn’t have to worry, all he had to do was make sure the communications worked, nobody expected him to eat snakes or jump out of airplanes.”
“And we turn him into a parachutist,” Jack said.
“I hope he got hurt after he got his fifth jump in,” Felter said. “I suspect he really wants the wings and the shiny boots.”
“On his fifth,” Lunsford said. “He’s got his five jumps.”
“Don’t let him do it again, Father,” Felter said. “He’s too valuable. ”
[ THREE ]
404 Avenue Leopold
Léopoldville, Republic of the Congo
1320 26 February 1965
The international operator informed Jack Portet that there was a problem with the circuits at the moment, his call to Fayetteville, North Carolina, could not be completed at this time, and suggested he try again later.
“Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle,” Jack said politely, hung up, and then angrily muttered, “Shit!”
Marjorie had taken the news that he was going to Africa now, rather than a month or so later, surprisingly calmly. It was nice to think that this was because she was, after all, an Army brat, and knew that Army wives have to get used to their husbands being sent off on short notice. But it was also possible that she was just putting on a bright face, and was pissed or hurt, or both.
But he had promised her that he would call the minute he got to Léopoldville, and he had called just as soon as they’d gotten to the house and he’d had a shower, so he had called her within an hour and a half of getting off the UTA flight from Brussels, which was close enough, and now the fucking circuits were having a problem.
He pulled open a shelf in his father’s desk, found the number he was looking for on a typewritten list, and dialed it.
“Le residence du Chef de l’ Armée de la Republique,” a male voice announced.
French, Jack thought. They hate the Belgians and anybody else who speaks French, but they answer the phone in French.
“This is Captain Jacques Portet of Air Simba,” Jack said in Swahili. “I would be very honored if General Mobutu could find a moment to speak to me.”
There was a long—at least two-minute—period of silence and then the operator came back on the line.
“Regrettably, the General cannot take your call at this time,” he said in French,
“Would you be good enough to give General Mobutu a message for me?” Jack asked, again in Swahili.
“I will try,” the operator said in French.
“Please inform General Mobutu that I am in Léopoldville, at my home, and would be honored if he could find the time to telephone me,” Jack said in Swahili, then spelled his name and gave the number—three times, before the operator managed to get it right.
He put the telephone in its cradle and walked through the French doors to the verandah, then down to the swimming pool, where, as Spec7 Peters, his leg in a now-soiled cast that ran most of the way up his calf, watched from an umbrellaed table as Major Lunsford and Captain Smythe tried unsuccessfully to wrest a pink rubber swan from the massive arms of Master Sergeant Thomas.
“Get through?” Lunsford called to Jack.
“No.”
“Hey, if Special Forces wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one,” Lunsford said.
Jack gave him the finger.
“And Mobutu wasn’t available,” Jack added.
“Meaning?”
“He may call this afternoon. He may call tomorrow, or three days from now, or he may never call,” Jack said. “Two variables affect the equation: One, they may not have passed my message on to him, and, two, presuming they did, he may not return the call for hours, or days, to make the point that he