Special Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  Lowell felt suddenly sure that he was talking about Willi Rangio.

  “Curiosity is about to overwhelm me, General.”

  “Where is the body now? I hope you can control your curiosity, Craig. I don’t think you need to know, but I will tell you if you ask.”

  “I will not ask, sir. Forgive me.”

  “I have told you our secrets, and over dinner, I hope you will tell us yours,” Pistarini said.

  He took Lowell’s arm and led him back through Rangio’s office to another room where a table had been set for dinner.

  A stocky man wearing a white jacket over uniform trousers served as the waiter. He reminded Lowell very much of Master Sergeant Doubting Thomas. An old soldier, tough as nails, and absolutely to be trusted to do whatever he was told to do.

  “There’s wine, of course,” Pistarini said as he waved them into chairs. “A very nice Merlot from Mendoza, but if you would like another whiskey?”

  “The wine will be fine, sir.”

  “And you haven’t finished the first, have you? Either of you.”

  It was a challenge, however tactfully phrased.

  “Waste not, want not, my general,” Lowell said, raised his glass, and drained it. Father did the same thing.

  The old soldier filled their wineglasses. It took nearly two bottles before he was finished.

  Then, with a grace surprising for his bulk, he served the first course, prosciutto ham wrapped around chunks of melon.

  “Delicious,” Lowell said. “Argentine?”

  “Oh, yes,” Willi Rangio said. “Tell me, Craig, would Sanford T. Felter eat that?”

  It was the first time he had said anything. His English was perfect, but without an identifiable accent, neither British, nor American, nor any variation of those dialects.

  “Would he eat the ham, Willi? Oh, yes, and with relish. Is he Jewish? Which, if it’s what you’re asking, yes he is.”

  “Is he CIA?” Rangio asked.

  “No, he’s not. Actually, Willi, I suspect that his service is much like yours. Are you a graduate of the military academy here?”

  “All Argentine officers are.”

  “Most Americans are not. I’m not, Father’s not. Felter is a West Pointer.”

  “He’s not listed in your Army Register,” Fosterwood said,

  “I didn’t know that,” Lowell said. “But it doesn’t surprise me. Anyway, Felter is a serving officer. A full colonel.”

  “You told General Pistarini that he is your closest friend,” Rangio said, making it a question.

  “Yes, he is,” Lowell said, and put a chunk of melon and prosciutto in his mouth.

  “Really delicious,” he said.

  “Tell us how you met him,” Rangio said.

  “I was a very young officer in Greece, a second lieutenant. Felter was there, as a first lieutenant. He had served in the war against Germany. He saved my life.”

  “How did he do that?” Fosterwood asked.

  “This is one of my secrets,” Lowell said, looked at Pistarini, and then went on: “I was serving with a Greek company on the Albanian border. We were attacked by Communists, Greek and Albanian, and nearly overrun. I was pretty badly shot up, and there were other wounded. A Greek relief column was sent, under an American captain—a West Pointer, by the way—to reinforce us. This ‘officer’ concluded that under the circumstances fifty dead Greeks, thirty wounded Greeks, fifteen unwounded men, and a second lieutenant did not justify moving the column in such a manner that would bring it under fire and he himself might be hit.”

  “And what happened?” Pistarini asked.

  “Felter did what he concluded was necessary for an honorable officer to do under the circumstances,” Lowell said matter-of-factly. “He shot him, took over the column, and, as the expression goes, saved my bacon.”

  “I never heard that story before,” Father blurted.

  “And you probably won’t again. It’s not for repeating. This is a special situation,” Lowell said.

  “So he was an intelligence officer as early as your involvement in Greece?” Rangio asked.

  “No,” Lowell said. “He got involved with intelligence—actually counterintelligence—after Greece. In Germany. Probably because he spoke German.”

  “I understand that you had many German Jews in Germany running down Nazis,” Rangio said.

  “We did, but from the beginning, Felter has been involved with the Communists.”

  “And do you think he had a connection with the Gehlen organization? ” Pistarini asked, almost innocently.

  “He did, and does, General,” Lowell said.

  “Am I allowed to ask what that is?” Fosterwood asked.

  “You don’t really know, Ricky?” Pistarini asked.

  “Sir, I’m just a simple soldier,” Fosterwood said.

  “General Gehlen was the Abwehr officer, under Admiral Canaris, in charge of Eastern intelligence, Russian intelligence,” Pistarini said. “When the war was over, he offered to turn his entire operation over to the Americans, providing that they didn’t go after any of his men in the de-Nazification program.”

  “And we agreed?” Father asked incredulously. “To let some Nazis walk?”

  Lowell nodded.

  “Either Eisenhower or President Truman—probably Truman, no one else would have had the authority—decided we couldn’t have done without what Gehlen was offering.”

  The waiter who reminded Lowell of Doubting Thomas took the prosciutto and melon plates away, replaced them with plates of enormous grilled chunks of filet mignon, and then refilled the wineglasses.

  When he had finished, General Pistarini asked, “And is that how Mr.—Colonel—Felter became close to General von Greiffenberg? ”

  “In a way, General,” Lowell said. “Felter learned that my father-in-law was in Siberia, with several thousand other German POWs the Russians never intended to send home. He arranged for the Gehlen organization to get him out.”

  “Because he was your father-in-law?” Rangio asked.

  “That was a happy by-product of getting him out,” Lowell said. “I think—and Felter’s told me this—that he could justify the effort because von Greiffenberg, whose anti-Nazi credentials are impeccable, was fully aware of what happened in the Katyn Forest.”

  “The Katyn Forest?” Fosterwood asked.

  “When the Red Army moved against Poland,” Lowell said, “they took a large portion of the Polish army officer corps, thousands of them, including several hundred teenage officer cadets, into the Katyn Forest, shot them in the back of the head, and buried them in unmarked mass graves. And then, when it came out, tried to blame it on the Germans.”

  “How did Felter know what happened in the Katyn Forest?” Rangio asked. “That General von Greiffenberg knew about it?”

  “While General von Greiffenberg—he was then a colonel— was recuperating from wounds during the war, he ran a prisoner-of -war camp for American officers. He took several of them to the forest and let them judge for themselves, from the evidence, who had been responsible.”

  “In the face of all the evidence,” Rangio said, “I am absolutely unable to understand why so many people refuse to believe the truth about the Russians.”

  “Willi,” Pistarini said resignedly, “how many Argentines absolutely refuse to believe the truth, despite the evidence, about Perón and his wife?”

  Rangio shrugged.

  “I also think Felter, and probably Gehlen,” Lowell went on, “agreed that with von Greiffenberg’s anti-Nazi credentials, plus his Russian experiences, he would almost certainly attain high rank in the German Army, might even become chief of intelligence. Getting him out was costly; they had to think carefully about doing it. But to answer your basic question, Willi, they did not get him out because he was my father-in-law.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  Lowell waved his hand in a dismissal of that, then went on:

  “Anyway, the Korean War came along, and Fe
lter went over there, by then an intelligence officer.”

  “It must be hard to be an intelligence officer if you don’t speak the language,” Rangio mused out loud.

  “Felter speaks Korean,” Lowell said. “And Russian. And Greek. And Vietnamese, and . . .”

  “And Spanish?” Pistarini asked.

  “Probably. I never asked him, but it wouldn’t surprise me. In fact, I’d bet on it.”

  “He’s like your General Vernon Walters,1then?” Pistarini asked.

  Lowell looked at him in surprise.

  “I met the general in Washington,” Pistarini said. “An amazing man. I heard he only has to hear a language for a couple of hours, and he can speak it.”

  “I don’t know if Felter is as good as General Walters, but he’s close,” Lowell said.

  “And that is how he reached his—what shall I say? Current position. As a linguist?”

  “Something like that,” Lowell said. “When Eisenhower was elected, before he was inaugurated, he went to Korea. Felter was assigned as his interpreter, and when Ike left Korea, Felter was on the plane with him. And he’s been a counselor to the President ever since. Kennedy after Eisenhower, Johnson after Kennedy.”

  “But you would agree, would you not, that he is more than a presidential interpreter?” Pistarini said.

  “I think that would be a fair statement,” Lowell said.

  “And is President Johnson aware of the decision that he and General von Greiffenberg have reached about Dr. Guevara?” Pistarini asked.

  “It was Colonel Felter’s recommendation, sir. President Johnson went along with the logic. Felter was sent to tell von Greiffenberg of the President’s decision, and he took me along to helpconvince him of the wisdom of the decision. There was no argument—von Greiffenberg and Felter are in complete agreement that everybody’s best interests are served by keeping Guevara alive.”

  “And you’re here on the same sort of mission?”

  “Yes, sir, as I told you.”

  “If it were up to you personally, Father,” Pistarini asked, “how would you handle the problem of Dr. Guevara?”

  “I’m a soldier, General,” Father said, just a little thickly. “I do what I’m told, but if it were up to me, I’d blow the murdering sonofabitch away the first chance I got.”

  And so, Lowell thought, would you, Willi, to judge from your no longer expressionless face.

  And then Pistarini read Lowell’s mind.

  “It would seem that Willi and Father are having trouble understanding the reasoning of your president and von Greiffenberg, Craig,” he said.

  “And you, sir?”

  “I agree with the decision,” Pistarini said. “Argentina already has one modern-day martyr in Evita. The country doesn’t need another one.”

  Willi’s face showed disappointment.

  “What are you proposing, Colonel Lowell?” Pistarini asked.

  “We will share our intelligence on his activities with you,” Lowell said. “We would like that to be reciprocal.”

  “Willi?”

  “That raises questions,” Rangio said, looking at Lowell, “how do we know what we’re getting is all you have, and that it can be trusted?”

  “It’s in our interest to see that you have everything, and I hope you will see that it is in yours to give us what you have.”

  “Anything else?” Pistarini asked.

  “The army attaché at our embassy here is about to get an airplane, a twin Beech, what we call the L-23.”

  “Very nice. I know the aircraft,” Pistarini said. “How much does Colonel Harris know of all this?”

  “Very little. I’m going to see him tomorrow, and I will tell him as little as possible.”

  “What about the airplane?” Fosterwood asked.

  “It will be used to 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 night. We would have gotten zero help with him running things.”

  “My memory is a little fuzzy, but we did come out of the place smelling like a rose, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, I think we did,” Lowell said. “I don’t think that was the booze talking. And Rangio has contacts in Chile, Bolivia, the other places, that we can’t come close to.”

  “And you think he’s on board?”

  “I think (a) he’s on board, and (b) will do what Pistarini tells him to do.”

  “Which hat, boss?” Father asked, holding up the green beret and the service cap.

  “The brimmed one,” Lowell said.

  “Did you forget yours?”

  “No. It’s in my briefcase, and when we accept Pistarini’s kind offer—let’s hope he remembers it—to join him for the cocktail hour at the Edificio Libertador, I’m going to wear it. But brimmed caps for the embassy, I think.”

  Lunsford opened his briefcase and stuffed the green beret in it.

  “You don’t wear yours much, do you?” he asked.

  “It makes me a little uncomfortable,” Lowell said. “I got fathered into Special Forces. I’ve made only seven parachute jumps, I never went through Mackall, and I really don’t know how to bite the head off a chicken.”

  Father smiled. “One of them was a HALO,2I understand?”

  “My first was a HALO,” Lowell said. “Red Hanrahan did that to me. I thought I was going to watch a HALO, and the next thing I know, two of his thugs grabbed my arms and dragged me off the open ramp of a C-130 at 30,000 feet.”