“The State Department tells me the Argentines won’t do it.”
“Zammoro’s relationship with Rangio may change that, sir.”
“You understand that if I insist that State ask for diplomatic status for them after they’ve said the Argentines won’t give it, and they’re proved right, they will make sure the President sees the egg on my face?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want to ask Rangio first?”
“I’ll ask Zammoro to ask him. See what happens then.”
“Let me know what happens then,” Felter said. “Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
"The sooner you’re back here, the better, I guess you know,” Felter said.
“Has something come up, sir?”
“You and Jack are the newlyweds,” Felter said, chuckled, and hung up.
“White House Secure,” a male voice said. “Are you clear?”
“Clear,” Oliver said, and put the handset in its cradle.
“You had to tell him, huh?” Stephens asked.
“Army officers are like Boy Scouts,” Oliver said. “We’re not supposed to lie, cheat, or steal.”
“I think that’s West Point cadets,” Stephens said.
“Actually, it’s Norwich,” Jack said. “We had the honor code before Hudson High.”
“Whatever,” Stephens said. “If you really believe that, maybe you’re in the wrong line of work. Lying, stealing, cheating, and worse, are part of this territory.”
“What about ‘all’s fair in love and war’?” Jack asked.
“Maybe there’s hope for you, at least, Lieutenant,” Stephens said. “So what did the legendary Colonel Felter have to say?”
“You couldn’t hear?”
“Call it confirmation of what I hope I heard,” Stephens said.
“He’s going to send Otmanio’s wife down here,” Oliver said. “And I was right, he didn’t know Zammoro and Rangio are old buddies. He left the decision up to me.”
“We lucked out,” Stephens said. “I don’t think you really understand how valuable that connection can be.”
“He said he was honorable, not stupid,” Jack said.
Stephens looked at Jack. One eyebrow went up, but he didn’t respond.
“I suppose the next step is to talk to Zammoro,” Oliver said.
“Rangio gave me a number to call.”
“Your next step is to make your manners to Colonel Harris,” Stephens said.
“Okay,” Oliver said. “Then Zammoro. I suppose you want to sit in on that, too?”
“Oh, no. By now Rangio has already warned Zammoro to stay away from me.”
“Rangio knows who you are . . . what you do?”
"Oh, sure. I often wonder who we think we’re fooling with these cover jobs.”
[ SIX ]
Apartment 10-B
Malabia 2350 Palermo
(U.S. Embassy Transient Quarters)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1715 3 February 1965
“That was quick,” Johnny Oliver said to WOJG Zammoro when he walked into the apartment.
“Colonel Rangio promised to deliver me ‘within an hour,’ ” Zammoro replied. “He is a man of his word.”
“We’re going to have to talk about your friend Colonel Rangio, ” Oliver said.
“Yes, sir,” Zammoro said, as if he had expected this. He looked at Jack Portet. “With respect, sir, may we talk alone?”
“No, I want Lieutenant Portet in on this,” Oliver said. “I told de la Santiago and Otmanio to go to the movies.”
“Yes, sir,” Zammoro said.
“Your credibility, Mr. Zammoro, and thus your usefulness to this mission, has been called into doubt,” Oliver said. “The one way you might, repeat might, regain some credibility is, from this moment, give me the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When and where did you meet Colonel Rangio?”
“In Argentina, sir, in 1952. I was sent to the Infantry School there. He was an instructor. And then I met him again in Cuba, in 1957.”
“What was Rangio doing in Cuba?”
“He was ostensibly the commercial attaché of the Argentinean embassy.”
“And actually?”
“He had been sent to Cuba by SIDE, sir.”
“And you were, then?”
“An infantry officer, a major. I was in an infantry battalion.”
“Not an intelligence officer?”
“General Batista used his intelligence service as a private police force,” Zammoro said contemptuously. “No, I was not one of them, I was a soldier.” General Fulgencio Batista was President of Cuba until the Castro-led revolution was successful.
“And how did you come to meet Colonel Rangio again?”
“He sought me out,” Zammoro said. “He offered his help.”
“What kind of help?”
“My regiment was then responsible for ‘controlling’ the insurrection in the Sierra Maestra mountains.”
“You mean Castro?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What was Rangio’s interest in that?”
“Castro’s medical officer—Ernesto Guevara de la Serna,” Zammoro said.
“You knew he was an intelligence officer?”
“I knew he wasn’t a ‘commercial attaché.’ When he told me he had just been promoted to lieutenant colonel—it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“And what kind of help did he offer?”
“He let me know that if Guevara was killed, there would be no repercussions from the Argentine government. He had the idea that the reason our campaign against Castro was failing was because we were worried about trouble from the Argentines, and other South American governments.”
“Was that true?”
“Captain, when senior officers are appointed to major commands because of their support of a corrupt regime, you don’t get an efficient army.”
“I suppose not. Is that what happened?”
“Yes. If Batista had let his good officers run the Army, he would probably still be President.”
“What was the Argentine interest in Castro?”
“They knew Guevara was a Communist. This was, you will recall, when Castro was posing as a fighter against the corrupt regime of Batista. It was only after he took Havana that it came out he was a Communist. The Argentines had apparently told the United States what they knew, and the U.S. did nothing. It would have been in the Argentine interest for the Castro rebellion to fail, and for Guevara to die while it failed. There are Communists here, too, you know.”
“Obviously, you didn’t succeed in stopping Castro,” Jack Portet said.
“We exchanged a gangster in an officer’s uniform for a Communist, ” Zammoro said.
“And you felt you had to get out of the country,” Oliver said.
“Just as soon as Castro was in Havana, he had Rangio declared persona non grata, but before he left he got word to me that I was on Señor Guevara’s arrest and execute list. Guevara knew of my association with Colonel Rangio. And of course Fidel himself wasn’t too happy with me. I took out a lot of his men.”
“And your wife didn’t get out,” Jack said softly.
“She was arrested the day I arrived in Miami,” Zammoro said. “She’s in a cage—literally, a cage—on the Isla de Pinos, an island off the southern coast.”
“Shit!” Jack said.
“Why didn’t you tell somebody—General Hanrahan, Colonel Felter, Colonel Lowell, somebody—about this?” Oliver asked.
“I knew they would be—with ample justification—suspicious of anyone who had been an officer in Batista’s army. I really wanted to get in Special Forces, and didn’t want to put any obstacles in my way.”
“Why did you want to get in Special Forces?” Jack asked.
“Right now, Lieutenant, who else in the world is interested in doing anything about stopping Communism in South America except Spe
cial Forces?”
“Why didn’t you go to Argentina?” Jack asked. “You had the connection with Rangio.”
“There are no foreigners in the Argentine Army,” Zammoro said. “I couldn’t have even enlisted as a private.”
“The real question here, Zammoro,” Oliver said, “is whether you’re a Special Forces officer who takes orders, or somebody in a Special Forces uniform who’s going to take the first clear shot he gets at Guevara.”
“Captain, you’re a Norwich graduate, a professional officer. I’d hoped you would understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I am a professional officer, too. Before I put on this uniform, I took a solemn oath before God to obey the officers appointed over me,” Zammoro said. “If those orders are not to kill the Antichrist sonofabitch who has my wife in a cage on starvation rations, I will obey them, whether or not I like them.”
Oliver looked into Zammoro’s eyes for a long moment, then stood up.
“I need a drink,” he said. “Anybody else?”
“A little scotch would go down nicely,” Jack said.
“No, thank you, sir,” Zammoro said.
Oliver went to the bar and returned with two glasses dark with whiskey. He handed one to Zammoro.
“Take it,” he said. “Get your own booze, Jack,” he added. “You’re only a lieutenant, and a damned junior one at that.”
Zammoro took the drink from Oliver but didn’t taste it. Oliver waited for Jack to make a drink, then touched his glass to Zammoro’s.
“Embassy policy is that two bachelor officers will share an apartment,” he said. “The embassy housing officer, who is also the CIA station chief, says he can waive that rule. What do you think, Julio? You want to share an apartment with de la Santiago or not?”
“Muchas gracias, mi capitán,” Zammoro said, his voice thick with emotion. “A sus órdenes, mi capitán.”
Jack and Oliver looked at him curiously.
’’’Muchas gracias’ means ‘thank you very much,” Zammoro translated. “ ‘A sus órdenes, mi capitán’ means, ‘I am at your orders, Captain.’ ”
“That’s nice, Julio,” Oliver said. “But I asked you a question.” Zammoro looked at the glass in his hand, then took a sip.
“If we were to have separate apartments against the policy, that might look odd,” he said. “And I have no objections whatever to sharing an apartment with de la Santiago. On the other hand, it might be very useful if we had a second apartment. Could that be arranged?”
“I don’t see why not,” Oliver said.
[ SEVEN ]
1210 Avenida Tucaman
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1525 5 February 1965
Captain John S. Oliver, Lieutenant Jacques Portet, Warrant Officers Junior Grade Enrico de la Santiago and Julio Zammoro, and SFC Jorge Otmanio—all in civilian clothing—had been standing on the sidewalk before the ornate door of the turn-of-the-century apartment building about five minutes when a 1964 Chevrolet Impala with CD license plates and a CD sticker on its bumper drove up, slowed, inched halfway onto the sidewalk, and stopped.
Mr. J. F. Stephens got out and walked up to them.
“Kept you waiting long?” he asked, offering his hand to Oliver.
“We just got here,” Oliver said.
“By the skin of our teeth,” Jack said. “I thought Paris had the craziest drivers in the world.”
“The Argentines try to excel in everything,” Stephens said. He pointed down the street at a large building. “That’s the Colón Opera House,” he said. “When it was built, the architect’s first order was to make it larger than the Paris Opera and the Vienna Opera.”
“Really?” Jack asked, chuckling.
Stephens put out his hand to Otmanio.
“I’m Jack Stephens, the embassy housing officer,” he said in Spanish.
“SFC Otmanio, señor.”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ Sergeant. I used to be a Spec Five,” Stephens said, still in Spanish. “Welcome to Buenos Aires and the U.S. Embassy family. What do you think so far?”
“It’s a beautiful city,” Otmanio said.
“Pity you’re married, Sergeant,” Stephens said. “The women are spectacular, as you may have noticed.”
“I’ve noticed,” Otmanio said, smiling.
Stephens offered his hand to de la Santiago.
“Enrico de la Santiago,” de la Santiago said.
“Portet tells me you used to fly together in Africa,” Stephens said. “What kind of airplanes was that?”
“Most of the time, it was old Boeing C-46s,” de la Santiago said.
“There are people here who don’t speak Spanish,” Jack Portet said.
“How unfortunate for you,” Stephens said. “Bear with me, Jack.”
He turned to Zammoro.
“You have to be Mr. Zammoro,” he said, switching back to Spanish.
“I am.”
“I understand you have friends here in Buenos Aires?”
“I do.”
“How lucky for you. Have they been showing you around?”
“Yes.”
“There’s two apartments here. Fourth and sixth floors. Would you prefer the fourth or the sixth?”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Zammoro said.
“Well, why don’t we have a look at both and then you can decide. ”
“Whatever you wish,” Zammoro said.
“Until Señora Otmanio gets here, we’ve been thinking of asking one of you to put the sergeant up. That would keep him from having to move in and out of the Marine Guards’ house. Would that pose any problem for you, Señor Zammoro?”
“No,” Zammoro said.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Stephens said, and then, without waiting for a reply, walked to the door and pushed a doorbell button.
An elderly Argentine in a suit opened the door to them.
Stephens introduced Zammoro, de la Santiago, and Otmanio as “embassy officers” who would be living in the two apartments, and told them that Señor Cavias was the porter, and the man to see if anything went wrong.
Then he led them to an open elevator, which appeared to have been added to the building before World War I, and finally switched to English.
“These are not reliable with more than three people aboard,” he said. “And, since Rank Has Its Privileges, you and the Lieutenant and I will ride up to the sixth floor, where I shall send the elevator back down for these three. Okay?”
“Fine,” Oliver said, a tone of impatience, or annoyance, in his voice.
When the elevator had risen far enough to be out of sight of Zammoro, Otmanio, and de la Santiago, Stephens reached in his pocket and handed Jack a sheet of paper.
“I am also a part-time mailman,” Stephens said. “That came in just before I left the embassy to come here.”
Oliver took it, read it, and handed it to Jack Portet.
SECRET
Central Intelligence Agency Langley, Virginia
FROM : Assistant Director For Administration
FROM: 4 February 1965 2115 GMT
SUBJECT : Guevara, Ernesto (Memorandum #44.)
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, Havana Cuba) The Cuban Army is recruiting approximately five hundred (500) Negro soldiers from its ranks, telling them they will be part of an “international contingent of freedom fighters.”
2. (Reliability Scale Two) (From CIA, Havana Cuba) It is rumored:a. The recruited troops are intended for use in Africa.
b. They will be trained in secret camps somewhere in Cuba.
3. Further information is
being sought, and if developed, will be furnished to you.
Howard W. O’Connor
HOWARD W. O’CONNOR
SECRET
“I’ll bet that ruined the whole day of the analyst who said it ‘was highly unlikely’ that the Cubans will take any military action on the African continent,” Stephens said.
“Five hundred is a lot of soldiers for a covert operation,” Oliver said.
“The minute things start going his way, he’ll drop the covert and it’ll become a liberation army,” Stephens said.
“Michael Hoare didn’t have anything like five hundred mercenaries—”
“Who?” Oliver interrupted.
“The South African Kasavubu hired to put down the Simba rebellion when his army couldn’t do it,” Jack said. “I don’t think he had two hundred people, and very few of those could be called ‘well-trained troops.’ He recruited most of them in waterfront bars in Belgium and France.”
“But they did take the Congo back, didn’t they?” Stephens said. “Lesson to be learned: You guys better stop Guevara before he gets very far.”
The elevator stopped with a lurch. Stephens slid the folding door open and waved them out. He punched a button on the control panel, then closed the door. The elevator began to descend.
Stephens led them across a tiled floor to a door and opened it.
The rooms were large and high-ceilinged, European. The obviously American furniture didn’t seem appropriate, and Jack idly wondered why the embassy hadn’t bought furniture locally.
They were still wandering around the apartment when de la Santiago and the others came in.
“The other apartment,” Stephens said, now in English, “give or take, is identical to this one.” He looked at Zammoro. “You’re going to use one of them as a safe house, I take it?”
“Thank you for speaking English,” Jack said.
“I was checking their Spanish,” Stephens said.
“And?” Oliver asked.
“If they work on the accent, the different words, Zammoro and de la Santiago could maybe pass for Argentines, Chileans, or Uruguayans. Otmanio, no way. He’s got a really strange accent.”
“Spanish Harlem Spanish, mixed with Puerto Rican,” Otmanio said.
“He’s also going to attract attention because of his black skin,” Stephens said. “There aren’t many really black people in Argentina. My advice is keep your mouth shut.”
Special Ops Page 50
