The Ambassador to Brazil. Peter Hornbostel
and whoever has the most troops is going to win! It will be sort of a game.”
“But can’t Jango do the same thing?” Carter asked.
“No,” Roberto said. “Jango won’t.” He held his index finger to his lips to signal a secret. “Because when the coup begins, we are going to cut off phone service to the Laranjeiras Palace, but we’ll leave the trunk lines between the generals open. Each of them will know how many troops the other has, and none of them is fool enough to fight a stronger army than his own. So why would there be fighting? As I said, it’s not the Brazilian way. The military will speak with one another by phone, but the president’s phone won’t be on. Not a word about this to anyone, you understand?” he added. “Not a word.”
Carter wondered why Roberto had told them his plan at all. Perhaps to show the United States it was not needed. Or maybe he was already thinking about the possibility of USAID financing for the modernization of the telephone system after the coup. How much did his spooks know about all this, he wondered. He doubted they would let him know.
CHAPTER 7
Harry Martoni, CIA station chief in Brazil, was not happy. He picked up the memorandum on his desk and read it through again. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
The memo was from the USAID legal advisor to the ambassador, and was classified “Secret.” “Mr. Ambassador:” it read:
It has come to the attention of USAID/Legal that three cases of electric cattle prods consigned to USAID/AgDiv are being held by Brazilian customs awaiting submission of required documentation by USAID. These devices are used on farms to herd cattle and pigs from their paddocks into trucks, and again from trucks into and through slaughterhouses, as well as for other agricultural purposes. However, similar instruments have also been furnished by the CIA to several African and South American countries and allegedly used for the torture of political prisoners.
There appear to be at least two irregularities regarding this procurement.
First, there is no record of how this procurement was funded. There is no PIOP on file, nor has Legal been able to uncover any other legal source or authorization for funding by USAID.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, there is no existing USAID or USAID-funded agricultural project or program in which these devices might be legitimately employed. Indeed, the chief of AgDiv asserts that it did not order these devices, and has no knowledge of who ordered them, nor of their intended use.
As you are aware, pursuant to the provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act, USAID funds may only be used for development purposes. Use for political purposes is expressly forbidden. Moreover, the Antideficiency Act prohibits any use of funds by the US government except pursuant to written authorization. As noted above, Legal has been unable to find any written authorization for this procurement or its funding. Unless such documentation exists within the embassy, the acquisition appears to be unlawful.
Legal recommends that the items in question be left in Brazilian customs pending a detailed investigation regarding the possible irregularity of this procurement, and the intended use of the items purchased.
The document was signed “Peter J. Thornton, legal advisor, USAID.” Across the bottom of the page was scrawled the word “concur,” followed by Carter’s signature and the acronym “AMB.” It had been forwarded to the Embassy Investigations Office. A friend of Harry’s there had sent a copy to him.
“Son of a bitch,” Harry said again. There were several things about the memo that bothered him. Of course, he regretted the loss of the prods. He had promised them to General Oscar Cavalcanti, Chief of DOPS, the federal intelligence service of the Brazilian government. It was going to be embarrassing to tell him that he couldn’t deliver. But what really bothered him was that somehow Thornton had found out about the prods, and what they were for. That phrase, “it has come to the attention of USAID Legal” was a dead giveaway. Obviously someone had told him, but who? Was the cover of his guy in the AgDiv blown? And why hadn’t Carter consulted him before he approved Thornton’s memo? He had worried for some time that Carter was talking with the Agency above his head, in Langley or perhaps in Rio, and without his knowledge. Maybe he knew more about what Harry was up to than he let on. He looked out the window at the never-ending rain. “Son of a bitch,” he said for a third time.
Most CIA operatives in Rio were located on the eighth floor of the embassy building on Avenida Presidente Wilson. Their cover was the “political section” of the embassy. But there were two “political sections”—one on the fifth floor staffed by foreign service types, the other on the eighth floor manned by the spooks. All you had to do was ask a guy’s room number, and you knew right away whether he worked for State or for the CIA.
Harry had turned down an office in the embassy building. His office was located on the sixth floor of a rather grubby office building on the Maua Square. Actually, all the buildings on the square were grubby. “Mow Square,” as the sailors called it, adjoined the port section of Rio de Janeiro. Virtually every building contained at least one pick-up bar. They ran from elegant to sleazy. So did the whores. This suited Harry just fine. If you wanted a drink, you rode the ancient elevator down six floors to the Devil’s Pleasure, on the ground floor. If you wanted sex, you picked up a piece, girl or boy, as you chose, and took her or him across the street to the Hotel Bleqaute. It took him a year before he figured out that “Bleqaute” meant “Blackout.” It was all one helluva lot better than sitting in the embassy building on Avenida Presidente Wilson.
But the biggest advantage for a spook was that the headquarters of the military police was right across the square, and the War Ministry was only about three blocks away. Here at his office on the Praça Maua, he and the Brazilians could work together in privacy. No one saw or cared who came and went. No one had any idea who he was or why he was there.
The “why” was, of course, the coming coup, or the “Revolution to Restore Democracy,” as it was called by the striped-pants set. Harry had never been able to figure why a military coup to throw out an elected civilian government should be called the “Revolution to Restore Democracy.” But no matter what it was called, he had no doubt that Goulart’s commie government had to go. And it was his job to make sure that happened.
Harry had spent the last two years cultivating the Brazilian military, providing them with small and large “gifts,” running from surplus watering cans to scotch whiskey to Thompson machine guns. And it had paid off. He was on a first-name basis with most of the generals and the colonels, certainly the important ones. They had drunk together, overeaten together, gone whoring together. Not bad work for a spy. And so they had let him in on what was happening, not because they didn’t know who he was, but because they did. They knew where the butter on their bread came from.
Looking out the window he could see General Oscar Cavalcanti in jeans and a rain jacket maneuvering his way around the puddles in the Praça Maua. A few minutes later he was in Harry’s office.
“What shitty weather,” the general said, taking off his jacket and shaking the water onto the rug. “And this is supposed to be summer.”
“Want to go downstairs for a drink? It’ll warm you up.”
The general shook his head no.
“I’ve got a little Johnnie Walker right here. How about a snort, just to warm up with?”
“Sure,” said the general. “No harm in that.”
Harry poured him a double of Red Label. The general gulped it down. “That’s the real stuff,” he said appreciatively. “Nothing fake in that.”
“Not for you,” said Harry.
The general smiled. “That’s what I like about your outfit,” he said. “You may be spies, but you never try to fool your friends. But your embassy…. ” His voice trailed away. Then he brightened again, “We’ve picked up a few of the kids who’ve been making some noise for Goulart. I’m sure they know what’s going on, but I can’t lay a hand on them. Their parents