there. He makes an excellent Soviet surrogate, sir. And a cheap one.”
“The CIA thinks he’s going to try to cause trouble for us in the banana republics. And now.”
“He will try that, too. And if he’s successful in Africa, that will make it so much easier.”
“Africa?” the President said dubiously.
“He leaves the U.S. for Algeria on 17 December, Mr. President. ”
The President looked at him but said nothing.
The presidential motorcade—smaller than usual, but still consisting of two District of Columbia police motorcycles, a District police car; a Secret Service Suburban, the presidential Lincoln limousine, a second Secret Service Suburban, and a trailing D.C. police car—turned off Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House grounds.
The limousine turned off the interior drive and stopped at the private entrance.
As a Secret Service agent trotted up to open the door, the President leaned forward and locked it.
“Felter,” he said. “Right now I think you’re as full of shit as a Christmas turkey, but I’m going to think about this, ask some questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t get too far away,” the President said, then unlocked the door and got out of the limousine and walked into the White House.
Felter got out of the limousine, then walked toward his office in what was now called the Executive Office Building, but had been built, in simpler days, as the State, War and Navy Departments Building.
[ FOUR ]
226 Providence Drive
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
1735 12 December 1964
“Charlene,” Major (Designate) George Washington Lunsford said to Charlene Lunsford Miller, Ph.D., Stanley Grottstein Professor of Sociology at Swarthmore College, “you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Major Lunsford offered this opinion of Professor Miller’s assessment of the political situation in the Congo at an unfortunate time, two seconds after their mother had pushed open the door to his room, bearing a tray of Camembert on crackers and bacon-wrapped oysters.
“George!” their mother, a slight, trim, light-skinned, gray-haired woman wearing a simple black dress with a single strand of pearls, said, truly shocked.
“Sorry, Mother,” Father Lunsford said, truly embarrassed.
“You apologize to your sister!”
“Sorry, Charlene,” Father Lunsford said, not very sincerely.
“It’s all right, Mother,” Professor Miller said, pushing herself out of an upholstered armchair. “I know what he’s been through.”
Just in time, Father Lunsford stopped the reply that came to his lips: “Screw you, don’t you dare humor me.”
“I thought you might want something to nibble on,” Mrs.
Lunsford said, setting the tray on Father Lunsford’s desk. There was an old blanket covering part of the desk, on which were the disassembled parts of a Colt Combat Commander .45 ACP automatic pistol. Lunsford had been cleaning the pistol when his sister came up to welcome him home.
“Not for me, Mother, thank you,” Professor Miller said. “I’d better go keep my husband away from the gin.”
She walked out of the room.
Lunsford popped a bacon-wrapped oyster into his mouth and chewed appreciatively. He sort of mumbled his approval.
Mrs. Lunsford waited until she heard Charlene’s heels on the wide wooden steps leading from the second floor to the foyer, then asked: “What was that all about?”
Lunsford shrugged. “It’s not important, Mother. My mouth ran away with me. I’m sorry.”
“What was it about, George?” Mrs. Lunsford insisted.
“The professor delivered a lecture,” Lunsford said, “apparently the collective wisdom of the faculty of Joseph Stalin U, equating what we did in the Congo with some of the more imaginative excesses of Adolf Hitler.”
His mother looked at him with troubled eyes, then smiled.
“As a special favor to me, George, could you refrain from referring to Swarthmore as ‘Joseph Stalin University’ tonight?”
He stepped quickly to her, put his arms around her, and lifted her off her feet.
“You’re my girl,” he said. “Your wish is my command.”
She kissed his cheek as he set her down.
“If you mean that, no politics tonight, agreed?”
“I don’t start it,” he said. “They start it. They get so excited to have a real live fascist in their midst that they slobber all over themselves waiting for their chance to tell me off.”
“I don’t think you’re a fascist,” she said. “Neither does your father. And I don’t think the President would have personally given you that medal if he thought you were.”
“On that subject,” Lunsford said, taking a Camembert cracker, “I don’t think we should bring up that medal tonight. Not with half the faculty of Swarthmore College at the table.”
She laughed, not entirely happily.
“Too late,” she said. “Your father’s put it on the phone table in the foyer. He’s greeting people, ‘Good evening, and incidentally, let me show you what President Johnson gave George