star, David the guerrilla taking on the nasty North American Goliath, and so far, winning. If Goliath terminated him, that would make Guevara a martyr, and that would cause us a lot of trouble. Goliath would look like a real sonofabitch, for one thing, and Castro and/or the Soviets would quickly replace him, and we would be no better off. What I think Guevara has in mind is taking a small force, no more than two hundred men—which is how many people Castro took into the Sierra Maestra mountains—to Africa, to the Congo, and repeating what Castro did in Cuba. I’d like him to fail.”
“The Russians are going to help him, of course,” Lunsford said. “And Mobutu and Kasavubu aren’t going to stand by and let Guevara take over the Congo. And ‘termination’ is about the first thing that’s going to occur to Mobutu.”
“If we had absolutely nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to do with it—and I don’t mean credible deniability, Father, I mean we have absolutely nothing to do with it—that wouldn’t be too big a problem. But what I’d like to see is Señor Guevara leaving Africa with his tail between his legs.”
“Humiliated, is what you’re saying?” Lunsford asked thoughtfully.
“Right.”
“Money talks,” Lunsford said. “I learned that over there. Keeping track of him wouldn’t be much trouble.”
“Money will not be a problem,” Felter said.
“Do I get to pick my people?”
“Yes.”
Lunsford looked at Johnny Oliver.
“Doubting Thomas,” he said. “There’s a certain exquisite irony, wouldn’t you say?”
Oliver chuckled.
“Who’s he?” Felter asked.
“Master Sergeant William Thomas,” Lunsford said. “He was with us when we walked out of Laos.”
“Actually, sir,” Oliver said. “He carried Major-Designate Lunsford out of Laos, bitterly complaining every step of the way.”
“And when he returned to Bragg, when offered his choice of language training at the Presidio, chose Swahili in the smug, if naive, belief that it would see him sent not only as far from Vietnam as possible, but would see him sent to the land of his ancestors, teaching the savages close-order drill, and where his position would offer him a never-ending procession of willing, nubile, sixteen-year-old maidens.”
“Where is he?” Felter asked.
“At Bragg,” Oliver said. “Teaching escape and evasion. I called him to tell him Father had made it out of the Congo.”
“And will he volunteer?”
“Sure,” Lunsford said, as if the question surprised him. He looked at Felter. “And I want Jack Portet, too.”
“That may pose a problem,” Felter said.
“Colonel, he knows the country, he speaks Swahili and French, he knows people, white, black, colored, and savage all over—”
“Define ‘savage’ for me, Father,” Felter said.
“There are four kinds of people in Africa,” Lunsford said. “The whites, the blacks, the colored—the mixed-bloods and, for some reason I haven’t entirely figured out, the Portuguese—and the savages, who are the Africans who came out of the trees last week.”
He looked between them.
“Okay. So it’s not a very nice word. Do you know a better word for somebody who beheads somebody else with a machete, then broils his or her liver for lunch? I saw them do that in Stanleyville. ”
Neither Felter nor Oliver responded.
“And just for the record, my liberal friends, that great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer who spent his life trying to help them, called them ‘les sauvages’,” Lunsford said.
“Sergeant Portet is about to get married to Marjorie Bellmon,” Felter said. “And is therefore unlikely to be willing to volunteer for anything.”
“They’re going to get married?” Oliver asked. “I thought I saw that coming.”
“I’ll need him, Colonel,” Lunsford said.
“I gather you’re going to take the job?” Oliver asked.
“What the hell, Johnny, I’ve already seen Vietnam, and I don’t want to spend the next three years of my life at Bragg teaching clowns to make fire by rubbing two sticks together.”
[ TWO ]
SECRET
Central Intelligence Agency Langley, Virginia
FROM: Assistant Director For Administration
FROM: 18 December 1964 0405 GMT
SUBJECT: Guevara, Ernesto (Memorandum #1.)
TO: Mr. Sanford T. Felter Counselor To The President Room 637, The Executive Office Building Washington, D.C.
By Courier
In compliance with Presidential Memorandum to The Director, Subject: “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara,” dated 14 December 1964, the following information, provided by the FBI, is furnished: (Reliability Scale Five).
SUBJECT departed John F. Kennedy airfield, New York City, aboard Air France Flight 305 at 2105 GMT 17 December 1964. He was accompanied by Héctor GARCÍA and José R. MANRESA. All are traveling on Cuban Diplomatic passports, and are ticketed to Paris, France, with an intermediate stop scheduled at Gander, Newfoundland.
CIA surveillance of SUBJECTS will begin at Gander, and dossiers of SUBJECTS GARCÍA and MANRESA will be furnished