good job of strangling the poor bastard, so Coizi told Sergeant First Jette to pull down on him; that tightened the noose, and after a minute or so, he stopped jerking around.”
He looked at Lunsford.
“While he was jerking around, everybody laughed. Funniest thing they’d seen in years.”
“It’s their business, Bill, not ours.”
“There would have been some WIA, too, except they went around and shot the wounded.”
“This is Africa, Bill.”
“We’re Africans, aren’t we?” Thomas asked.
“I was born in Philadelphia,” Father said.
“You know what I’ve been thinking, Father?”
Oh, Jesus. I hope he’s not going to jump on the guilt wagon. I shouldn’t have let them hang the guy. I should have stopped it.
“I’m getting a real hard-on for this Guevara bastard,” Thomas said.
That was the last thing Lunsford expected to hear.
“How so?”
“He wants to use these fucking people. He doesn’t give a shit about them.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Probably, my ass. I’m abso-fucking-lutely on the money. He wants to be the big tamale in South America, and if that means a couple of thousand, a couple of tens of thousands of these poor fucking savages get blown away to get him there, that’s fine with him.”
Lunsford didn’t reply.
“I shot two guys this morning,” Thomas said. “Took the first one down with a chest shot; he didn’t know what hit him. The second one I hit in the shoulder, and I had to shoot him twice. Okay. So maybe they did cut Withers’s head and leg off. But Withers wouldn’t have been here in the first place—none of us would—if that fucking Guevara wasn’t trying to take over this country.”
“I have to agree, Bill.”
“So if it wasn’t for Che fucking Guevara, Withers would be alive, right?”
Lunsford nodded.
“And so would those two savages I popped this morning, and all those poor fucking savages Coizi’s shooters got, right?”
“Right.”
“And now Che fucking Guevara is about to come across Lake Tanganyika in fucking person, right?”
“That’s the intel, Bill.”
“And if I pop the bastard—the only sonofabitch who really deserves to be popped—my ass is in a crack, right?”
“Very seriously in a crack, Bill,” Lunsford said. “Don’t even think about it.”
“That’s what I thought you would say,” Thomas said.
He picked up the bottle of Martel and held it out to Lunsford. “You want a little taste, Father?”
“Thank you,” Lunsford said, and took a pull from the bottle’s neck.
“I’m trusting you on this one, Father,” Thomas said. “I really would like to pop Che fucking Guevara.”
“Not popping him is going to cause him, and people like him, more trouble than popping him,” Lunsford said.
“So I keep hearing.”
“You going to be all right, Bill?”
“Yeah. I’ll just have a couple more tastes and hang it up for the day.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m already shitfaced. I don’t want Craig’s wife to see me this way.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Tough broad, that one,” Thomas said. “Coming here to be with her man. You have to admire that. I’d like to find one like that.”
“Me, too,” Lunsford said, and was genuinely shocked when an image of Cecilia The Real Dar es Salaam Station Chief flashed through his mind.
God, that’s strange. I don’t even know her last name. What triggered that? When Doubting Thomas called Geoff’s wife a “tough broad”? And that isn’t the first time I’ve thought of her, either.
What did she say? Maybe sometime, when you’re wearing shoes, we could talk about dinner again.
“You know she got out of East Berlin by crashing through the wall in a truck?” Thomas asked admiringly. “Tough broad.”
“I heard,” Lunsford said. “You sure you’re going to be all right, Bill? You want me to hang around?”
“With all respect, Major, sir, get the fuck out of here.”
[ THREE ]
Room 637, The Executive Office Building
Washington, D.C.
0930 21 April 1965
Mary Margaret Dunne knocked politely at the door of Colonel Sanford T. Felter, and when he motioned her to enter, handed him a sheet of paper.
“Just delivered, Colonel,” she said.
He took it and read it.
SECRET
Central Intelligence Agency Langley, Virginia
FROM: Assistant Director For Administration
FROM: 21 April 1965 1345 GMT
SUBJECT: Guevara, Ernesto (Memorandum #75.)
TO: Mr. Sanford T. Felter
Counselor To The President
Room 637, The Executive Office Building
Washington, D.C.
By Officer Courier
In compliance with Presidential Memorandum to The Director, Subject: “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara,” dated 14 December 1964, the following information is being furnished: .
From CIA Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika (Reliability Scale Five):
1. In response to an inquiry by US Ambassador,Tanganyikan Minister of Foreign Affairs denied any knowledge of Cubans anywhere in Tanganyika.
2. Accompanied by a senior Tanganyikan police official, sixteen Cubans, including Guevara and Dreke, left the Morogoro farm on two trucks 2130