There was a good deal of applause at that, and people got to their feet.
“And finally, there is another Special Forces officer here tonight, in the rear of the room, for whom Mrs. Bellmon and I have a great deal of affection, and our daughter Marjorie has even more affection. Lieutenant Portet, will you stand up, please?”
Jack got uncomfortably to his feet.
“Lieutenant Portet was supposed to be sitting at the head table tonight, because he will shortly be our son-in-law, and it was my intention to introduce him to everybody.”
More applause.
“But he’s a Green Beret, and we all know about Green Berets. They do what they want to do, not what someone else wants them to do, so he’s sitting in the back of the room where he wants to be.”
There was nervous laughter at this.
“With him is another old and dear friend of the family—our children call him ‘Uncle Craig’—who is more or less one of us, an old-time Army Aviator who now wears a Green Beret, Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell. And our son, Bobby, who very recently won his wings and became one of us.”
There was polite applause at this.
“And I would like, in the friendliest possible way, to suggest to General Hanrahan, and Colonel Lowell, and Captain Oliver, and Lieutenant Portet, that if I hear even the hint of a rumor that they are trying to get my son to go to Fort Bragg with them and become a snake-eater like they are, when I am through with them, they will be the first male soprano quartet in the history of the U.S. Army.”
There was laughter, some hearty and some a little nervous, that the commanding general would, even as a joke, threaten to castrate anybody.
And only Colonel Lowell and Lieutenant Bellmon knew, of course, that Bobby had three minutes before asked Uncle Craig what he thought about his applying for Special Forces, and would he help get him in?
[ THREE ]
SECRET
Central Intelligence Agency Langley, Virginia
FROM : Assistant Director For Administration
FROM: 19 December 1964 1505 GMT
SUBJECT : Guevara, Ernesto (Memorandum #2.)
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 is furnished:1. (Reliability Scale Five) (From CIA, Paris, France) SUBJECT and party landed at Orly Field, Paris, France, 2305 GMT 18 December 1964. They were met by Cuban Ambassador to France and French Foreign Ministry officials. They were taken to VIP waiting room, and at 0315 19 December 1964, they boarded Air France Flight 1727 for Algiers, Algeria.
2. CIA surveillance was terminated at this time. CIA Algiers, Algeria has been advised, and will attempt to pick up surveillance in Algiers.
Howard W. O’Connor
HOWARD W. O’CONNOR
SECRET
[ FOUR ]
Room 2012
The Daleville Inn
Daleville, Alabama
0555 20 December 1964
There had been verbal orders from Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell to augment the Department of the Army Special Orders vis-à-vis 1st Lt. PORTET, Jacques E., which explained his presence in the Daleville Inn.
“From now on, Jack,” Lowell said as they had flown to Cairns Field in Lowell’s Cessna 310-H, “the name of the game is not attracting attention to yourself. The reason you’re on per diem, for example, is not to provide you with a place to fool around with Marjorie at government expense, but to keep you out of the BOQ.”
Jack knew he could not indignantly proclaim his and Marjorie’s innocence. Marjorie had, after all, followed Lowell’s map at Ocean Reef, and Lowell knew it.
Lowell had smiled at him and then gone on:
“The BOQs are full of lieutenants undergoing flight training, and the sudden appearance in their midst of a Special Forces lieutenant taking a special flight training program would make them naturally curious, and they would ask questions which you could not answer. Get the picture?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This way, in the Daleville Inn, it will look like you’re staying there waiting for the glorious day of your being joined in holy matrimony to the beautiful Miss Marjorie.”
“I get the picture, sir.”
“There will be a telephone in your room, a private number, not going through the switchboard. It won’t be a secure line, but it will be a lot more private than the phone on the wall of the corridor in a BOQ.”
That telephone had rung at 2135 the previous evening, shortly after Miss Marjorie and Jack had entered the room “to watch a little TV.”