“More important, I have American citizenship,” his father said. “Awarded for the faithful service during wartime of Captain Portet, J. P., U.S. Army Air Corps, 0-785499. I never thought much about it, really, until she was born.” He inclined his head toward Jeanine. “We had three choices: Hanni’s German, so we could have gone to the German consulate in what was then Léopoldville, and registered her as a German. Or, going to the U.S. Consulate, and getting her an American passport. Or going to the Belgian Registry office, making her a Belgian. It didn’t take Hanni and me long to decide that Jeanine would be better off all-around as an American. So Jeanine ‘came home,’ too, after eleven years abroad.”
“You never told me any of this, Dad,” Jack said.
Captain Portet chuckled again.
“The immigration guy took a look at Jeanine’s passport and said, ‘This has expired. You’ll have to get her another one before she leaves the country again.’ ”
“But this isn’t her first trip here?”
“She always traveled, as we all did, from the time I went down there to start up Air Congo, on a Congolese passport,” his father said.
“What are you going to do, move here?” Jack asked incredulously.
His father did not respond directly.
“I had dinner with Mobutu the night before the drop on Stanleyville, ” Captain Portet said. “Several significant things were said. He told me he had just come from seeing Kasavubu, who was drunk, and in a rage against the Belgians, who were, he is absolutely convinced, behind Olenga. Mobutu said nothing he could say would shake this conviction, and he quickly stopped trying.”
“My God, where did he get that idea?”
“It fits neatly in with Kasavubu’s belief that the Belgians will do whatever they have to take the Congo back,” Captain Portet said. “He thinks the Belgians were behind the Katangese Rebellion—”
“The Belgians sent troops to put the Katangese Rebellion down,” Jack argued.
“Kasavubu believes it gave them an excuse to send troops down to restore colonialism. And he believes the jump on Stanleyville was going to be more of the same thing.”
“Jesus!”
“What Mobutu said was that Kasavubu’s unwillingness to accept this—Kasavubu’s willingness to accept the Belgian intervention at Stanleyville, in particular—proves that Kasavubu is unfit to lead the country, and will have to be replaced.”
“Did Kasavubu really think the Belgians were going to stand idly by as the Simbas killed the Europeans one by one?” Jack asked angrily.
“Kasavubu believes the Congolese Army, under the leadership of Lieutenant General Mobutu, would have dealt with the problem in good time,” Captain Portet said sarcastically. “Mike Hoare’s mercenaries, much less the Belgian paras, were not necessary. ”
“Jesus,” Jack said. “Was it the booze talking?”
“Sure. But in vino veritas, Jacques.”
“You said Mobutu thinks Kasavubu has to be replaced. Who does he have in mind?”
“Who do you think? He almost came out and said it, and believe me, Jacques, there is no question in my mind that sooner or later, probably sooner, Mobutu is going to stage a coup against Kasavubu, and probably succeed. I want to get out before that happens—or the other inevitable thing happens. The result in either case being chaos.”
“What other inevitable thing?”
“The Communists have another shot at taking over that part of the world. They’re not through, and I don’t like to think what would have happened in Stanleyville if they had managed to get arms to Olenga.”
“What will happen to Air Simba?”
“I’m going to sell it to one of Joseph Désiré Mobutu’s cousins,” Captain Portet said. “That was another interesting thing he said at dinner. He said that he has a cousin who would like to ‘take a position’ in Air Simba. I wondered who taught him to say ‘take a position.’ ”
“ ‘A cousin’?”
Again his father didn’t respond directly.
“And I realized that once the camel’s nose came under the tent, we could kiss Air Simba good-bye, anyway. In two months, there would be fifty more cousins on the payroll, fighting over which one got to put his hand in the cash register today.”
“Where would he get the money?”
“He told me his cousin ‘found himself in a strong cash position’ and was ‘looking for a suitable investment opportunity.’ I told him that while I was here, I would come up with a price. I know what it’s worth, so the price will be that, plus the price of the house, the cars, the furniture, everything else. For that his ‘cousin’ can have a fifty-percent ‘position’ in Air Simba.”