The Ambassador to Brazil. Peter Hornbostel

The Ambassador to Brazil

and reviews, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Four Winds Press

San Francisco, CA

ISBN: 978-1-940423-11-1

Cover and interior design by Domini Dragoone

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Distributed by Publishers Group West

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Preface

In mid-March 1964, a secret task force of United States warships and tankers set sail from the Caribbean bound for Brazil. The flotilla, which had the code name “Brother Sam,” included the world’s largest aircraft carrier, several destroyers, a troop carrier and three tankers. The United States later claimed that it was only intended to “show the American flag,” not invade, and that no one in the Brazilian military knew the task force was coming. In fact, neither was true. Although the flotilla never arrived in Brazilian waters, its actual purpose was to provide logistic and tactical support to the generals who were planning the coup. Of course they knew it was coming.

There were many in the United States government who were anxious to participate in the coup. The CIA was desperately seeking a way to resurrect its reputation, which had been shattered a few years earlier in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Lincoln Gordon, the United States ambassador in Rio, a former Harvard professor, had achieved nothing by the embassy’s surreptitious contributions of millions of dollars to the political campaigns of right wing Brazilian politicians. He was anxious for the United States to achieve some kind of success that he could claim as his own. Meanwhile, the White House was seeking to establish President Lyndon Johnson as leader of the hemisphere, in place of John Kennedy, whose reputation in death remained far greater than Johnson’s own.

Although 50 years have passed since the “revolution to restore democracy” (as the CIA called it), much remains unknown about what the United States actually did, and what effect, if any, it had in bringing about the success of the coup. Declassified State Department cables have shed some light. Several CIA cables have also recently been declassified. But the operating cables that describe the activities of the Agency in Brazil remain classified. Presumably they contain information that the CIA prefers to keep secret, such as plans it may have had for the assassination of President Joao Goulart (as happened to President Allende in Chile several years later), the identity of its agents in Brazil, and details regarding Operation Brother Sam and its schedule.

Another question that has been completely buried is the risk of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union triggered by Operation Brother Sam. The flotilla set sail less than two years after the Cuban missile crisis, at a time when Nikita Kruschev was still in power. The question is not mentioned in any publicly released United States government document.

In this work of fiction, Peter Hornbostel, legal advisor to USAID in Washington and Brazil from 1963 to 1968, tells the story of what the role of the United States may have been. Ambassador Anthony Carter, the protagonist of the book, was kept in the dark by the CIA regarding much of what was going on. The same may have happened to the actual US ambassador at the time, Lincoln Gordon. Gordon may not have known who was actually in charge of the CIA’s operations in Brazil. Neither did Carter.

US President Lyndon Johnson, Brazilian Marshal Castelo Branco, and the Brazilian generals (Costa e Silva, Kruel, Geisel, Golbery, and others) were, of course, alive and well at the time of the coup. However, all words, actions, expressions, or intentions of any character are entirely fictional.

This is also a love story. Marina, Ambassador Carter’s mistress is, of course, fictional as well. What a pity….

—P.A.H.

CHAPTER 1

It’s the rains of March

ending the summer;

It’s the promise of life

in your heart.

—Vinicius de Moraes & Antonio Carlos Jobim,

“Aguas de Março”

Anthony Theodore Carter, ambassador of the United States of America to the Federative Republic of Brazil, nude but for the towel around his waist, stood at the window watching the rain which had been falling on Rio de Janeiro for six days, so hard now that he could barely see the buildings across Siqueira Campos Street through the rain. Three stories down, the rain had turned the street into a brown torrent, which raced down, across Rua Barata Ribeiro and Avenida Copacabana, over Avenida Atlantica, and then across the beach to the sea, itself turned brown by the rain.

Rio in the rain is not so marvelous, he thought to himself. “Cidade Maravilhosa.” The Marvelous City. That was the name it was given by the Mangueira Samba School in the Carnaval parade a few years ago. It is marvelous, he thought, but not in the rain.

The first time he had seen Rio had been twenty years ago. It was summer, no rain, and Rio was full of light and life, and heat, and sex, and smells, not separately, but all mixed together under a blue tropical sky. His prop-driven Pan Am plane had emerged from the clouds, and he could see the green of the mountains, then the blue-gray of Guanabara Bay embracing the city. As the plane dropped lower, he could also see the slums—the shacks perched on poles above the sewage-dirty water along the edges of the bay. Ahead stood the peak of Corcovado with the famous statue of Christ, and the escarpment plunging down from the statue into the south zone of Rio where the elite lived, out of sight of the shanties along the bay. But all of it, even the shantytowns, looked colorful, even picturesque from the sky, although he knew they weren’t.

The plane landed and rolled over to the terminal, a large white building with a balcony one floor up that was full of people. A large sign announced the airport as Galeão. Two brawny airport employees, their sweaty black bodies gleaming in the sun, rolled a mobile staircase over to the door of the plane. He was first in the line to disembark, and when the doors opened and Rio de Janeiro hit him square in the face, his eyes squinted almost shut against the glare of the concrete apron and the white of the terminal. On the balcony of the terminal, a five-person family was shouting a samba, somewhat off-key, while the littlest boy banged out the rhythm on a makeshift tin drum. His two older brothers were holding a welcome home sign reading Bem vinda Mariazinha!, Welcome home little Maria. Dozens of other families crowded the balcony, craning their necks and shouting to the passengers streaming by them below, laden with shopping bags and boxes, on their way to customs.

But what he remembered most clearly was the air that swept into the plane, displacing the stale air of the fourteen-hour journey from Washington. It seemed to be at least 90 degrees and humid as a steam bath. And it smelled—well, it smelled like Rio de Janeiro. He had tried again and again to sort out the ingredients of that smell: Clearly it included jet fuel, human sweat, and jasmine, plus another flower he did not know. And there was the water of the bay at the end of the runway, a cool fresh breeze with a whiff of sewage, but only now and then. Coffee definitely. And bananas. And oranges, or was it pineapple? Cigarette smoke. They all blended together, like the colors of a rainbow.

He walked under the balcony into a terminal which looked like a movie set. The ceiling of the main

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