transport our military attaché personnel around Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile, visiting as many bases and places as we can get the army attaché and his staff invited to.”
“And you don’t want me to pay much attention to it, right?” Rangio asked.
“I hope you do more than that,” Lowell said. “The copilot will be a U.S. Army warrant officer named Enrico de la Santiago. I think you might become friends.”
“Why is that?”
“He really hates Señor Guevara. Guevara personally murdered his grandfather in Havana, with Enrico’s mother and grandmother watching.”
“What did they do?” Pistarini asked.
“His grandfather was a lawyer,” Lowell said, “who was known for saying unkind things about Communists. And then Guevara knew that Enrico had flown a Cuban Air Force fighter to Florida, saying that as a Catholic he was obliged to fight Castro.”
“And what does he think of the decision to keep Guevara alive?”
“He’s every bit as enthusiastic about it as you and Father,” Lowell said.
Rangio laughed. “I look forward to meeting him,” he said. “When the airplane is delivered, and that should be shortly, there will be other people concerned with this aboard. A master sergeant named Thomas, who will be going to the Congo with Father; an officer who was raised in the Congo, and is helping train Father’s people; and another officer who will be coordinating things at Fort Bragg. I’d like them to learn as much as they can about Guevara—what you have on him, where he was raised, that sort of thing.”
“ ‘Know your enemy,’ eh?” Pistarini said. “Work out the details between you, Willi.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now, gentlemen,” Pistarini said, “I think we should have a brandy and call it a night. It’s been a very busy day.”
IX
[ ONE ]
Círculo Militar
Plaza San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0915 4 January 1965
Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell came into the sitting room of the suite in a tropical worsted uniform. It bore the silver-leaf oak leaves of his rank on its epaulets: four rows of four-wide colored ribbons, plus one on top of these. The single ribbon was that of the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for gallantry in action. The other ribbons represented other decorations, United States and foreign, including the Purple Heart medal with two oak-leaf clusters, indicating he had three times been wounded in combat, and what he thought of as his “I was there” ribbons, attesting that he had served in the European Theatre of Operations, the Army of Occupation in Germany, Korea, and the Republic of Vietnam.
Immediately below the ribbons were the wings of the parachutist, and immediately above them the silver wings with a wreathed star indicating he was a Master Army Aviator. Above these was the only device he thought meant a damn, a wreathed blue oblong box with a musket inside, the Combat Infantry Badge. His had a star within the wreath, indicating the second award.
Over the other breast pocket were devices indicating and representing the Distinguished Unit Citations of the United States and the Republic of Korea, and pinned to the blouse pocket beneath was the badge attesting that he had served on the General Staff of the U.S. Army. His lapels carried the insignia of the General Staff Corps.
Major George Washington Lunsford was similarly uniformed. He had fewer ribbons, the one on top of the others the Silver Star, with clusters indicating he had won the third-highest decoration three times. He, too, had won the Combat Infantry Badge, but only once. His parachutist’s wings, however, had a wreath and a star, indicating he was a Master Parachutist. His lapels carried the crossed rifles of infantry, and there was no GSC badge, but that pocket of his uniform carried the parachutists wings of the Vietnamese, the Australians, and the Germans.
He held a leather-brimmed uniform cap in one hand, and a green beret in the other.
“If I may be permitted to say so, mi coronel, you look like death warmed over in a splendidly tailored uniform,” Lunsford said.
“I was doing all right until Pistarini said ‘Let’s have a brandy and call it a day,’ or words to that effect,” Lowell said. “What he obviously meant was let’s have a bottle of brandy, each.”
“What was that all about?” Lunsford asked.
“I think by then he understood that Perón was really on his way back to Spain, and he could really relax.”
“If Perón had come back, Pistarini would have been in trouble?”
“And so would we,” Lowell said. “Perón hates all things American, or North American, as I learned to say last