The Ambassador to Brazil. Peter Hornbostel
steps.
On the next level up, four scantily clad young women swayed at the centers of four large silver stars marked N, O, S, and L, which, Carter assumed, stood for north, west, south, and east. A giant gold column rose from the center of the second level to support the smaller third level on which a beautiful brown-skinned girl stood, waving regally to the crowd. She was dressed only in a long shimmering tail of blue-green fabric covered with small blue mirrors. Her breasts were bare.
“That’s the Bangu Samba School,” Ferreira said. “They won the Carnaval competition last year.”
“I’m not surprised,” Carter replied.
“She’s Yemanja,” Ferreira added, nodding to the float, “the fish-tailed Goddess of the Sea. Perhaps our most important goddess. All of us in Rio respect her, even those who don’t practice Macumba.”
Carter looked puzzled.
“Macumba is based mostly on African religions.” Ferreira went on, “It is practiced by a lot of our people who are poorer and of African descent. Not many wealthier people are followers. But many of us go down to the beach on New Year’s Eve, when Yemanja is said to pass closest to shore, and throw flowers into the surf, just to cover our bets.”
“If that’s what she looks like,” Carter said, “I’d throw flowers, too.”
CHAPTER 4
Carter had a total of three cars. The car for official occasions was a black 1955 Cadillac, complete with fixtures on the front bumper where he could attach small American flags if he wanted, and curtains on the side to hide the identity of whoever was inside. It came with a driver named Joaozinho. Joaozinho had a large mustache and a chauffeur’s cap, which he wore whenever he drove Carter anywhere, about once a week. The rest of the time he spent shining up the car and otherwise doing “porra nenhuma” (Portuguese for “nothing at all”).
His second car was a deep maroon Aero Willys. It was one of the only two cars being manufactured in Brazil, and about as uncomfortable as a car could get. The springs seemed to be solid steel, the seats hard and angled so that they put your feet to sleep within minutes. As far as he could tell, there were no shock absorbers. The engine noise resembled the sound of a Sherman tank rumbling down Avenida President Vargas. It had been given to the embassy by a distant and clearly anti-American member of the Willys family, and was used only when the United States wanted, for one reason or another, to show off its use of products made in Brazil. Fortunately, that wasn’t too often.
His favorite car by far was his VW beetle, or Fusca, as the Brazilians called it, painted yellow with a discreet dark blue stripe down the side. It had been a taxi until a year ago when Carter bought it used from a local taxi company. He persuaded the sales manager to throw in an electrified sign that read “Taxi”, which he could attach to the top of the car with a couple of bungee cords. Usually, though, that wasn’t necessary. He could achieve almost complete anonymity simply by driving it through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, which contained thousands of other Fuscas just like it.
He was glad to be driving it now, on his way to the embassy. While the car was small, the motor in the back of the car was fairly high above the chassis, and the spark plugs were located near the top of that. Siqueira Campos crossed Barata Ribeiro a few hundred meters down the street, where the water had formed a brown lake. He stopped at the edge of it.
Carter knew all about this lake. And the others like it. The storm sewers were clogged up all over Rio de Janeiro, and had been for years. He had offered the municipal government some American sewer-cleaning equipment, and to have USAID finance a project to rebuild the storm sewers in Copacabana. That was a year ago, and Washington was still trying to figure out whether the government of the State of Guanabara, which covered exactly the same area as the City of Rio de Janeiro, was really for or against the national government of President Joao Goulart, and whether the project should therefore be disapproved or approved. The problem was that although Carlos Lacerda, the governor of the State of Guanabara, was vehemently opposed to the Goulart government, the mayor of the city seemed to be in favor.
Per instructions from Washington, the political section at the embassy kept two lists, the A list and the B list, of the various political subdivisions and governmental bodies of Brazil: ministries, the armed forces, states, municipalities, territories, agencies, divisions, government-owned corporations, etc. The A list were the “democratic forces” arrayed against the Goulart government. The B list were his “pinko” supporters. All AID financed projects were to be directed exclusively to the political bodies and politicians on the A list, never to those on the B list. In the case of Rio de Janeiro, the state of Rio de Janeiro was on the A list; the city of Rio de Janeiro was on the B list. But both covered exactly the same geographic area.
The storm sewer problem was further complicated by the fact that although the sewers themselves were under the jurisdiction of the state water and sewer authority (clearly A list), the streets and the sewer grates were a municipal responsibility, and hence on the B list. Stoney Wyndam, the USAID sewer engineer who was blissfully ignorant even of the existence of the A and B lists or of any political issues at all, had prepared a proposal for rebuilding the storm sewers and sent it to the ambassador. In the hope of slipping it through the bureaucracy if it were called a “study” (the State Department loved studies), Carter had retitled the project as a “Study Proposal”, and sent it to Washington for approval and authorization.
But now, a year later, the bureaucrats in Washington were still studying Stoney’s proposal. The Desk was simply unable to deal with a project which was on the A list and the B list at the same time, and so Carter was now faced with a small brown lake at the corner of Barata Ribeiro and Siqueira Campos, wondering whether his VW beetle would make it through.
“Oh, what the hell,” he said out loud. Carter put the car in gear, and very slowly started through the lake. It did not take long for the water to reach the hubcaps. A few seconds later, it was starting to seep into the car at the bottom of the door. He inched forward. Now the water reached the headlights. He thought he could feel the car begin to float; if it did, he thought, maybe the spark plugs would stay above water. Not likely, though. And then, just as he was certain the motor was bound to die, he could feel the tires take hold, and begin to pull the car out of the lake on the other bank and back onto Rua Barata Ribeiro.
“Well, Mr. Ambassador,” he said to himself, “You’re out of hot water one more time.” Chuckling at his own joke, he drove on through the pelting rain toward the center of the city, and the United States embassy. Two blocks from Siqueira Campos, a 1949 black Plymouth sedan pulled out of Rua Santa Clara, and followed him as far as Flamengo, where it turned off onto Rua Paissandu and disappeared. Carter did not notice it.
CHAPTER 5
One thing he hated about the job of ambassador was that it set you apart from and above almost everyone else on the social pecking order. Not that he minded that inside the embassy he was chief of mission and head of the country team. Theoretically that put him above even the spooks, at least when he knew what they were up to. But he hated being “Mr. Ambassador” to the Brazilians, especially those who were not in the foreign ministry. He would have liked to joke with taxi drivers rather than riding in his aging Cadillac with the embassy driver. He thought about trading good-natured insults with the waiters at the Bar Lagoa, rather than sitting at state dinners making small talk with the wife of some African ambassador. He would have liked to play chess with the old timers at Posto 6 at the end of the Copacabana Beach. But the ambassador of the most powerful nation on earth could not be seen doing these things.
Soon after he had arrived in Rio, a young man from the American School asked for a brief appointment. Curious, Carter agreed. It seemed the school was setting up a drama department as well as a small English-language theater. The young man, who was to be the drama teacher, had heard that the ambassador had done some acting in college. Would he be willing to give a short talk at the opening of the theater before the first performance?
“I’d be delighted,” said Carter. “But there’s one condition.” The young man’s face clouded. “I’d also like to be in your play, just a bit part. Do you think you