Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

So Wolfsbricker sends a message to the admiral that the CIA is out of business in Yugoslavia until the order is rescinded and he wasn’t kidding. He said nobody was to come to the office or conduct any business in Belgrade or anywhere else in Yugoslavia. Mr. Ambassador was piiiiiiiissed. Worse, he was cursing the director about something he didn’t have a fucking clue about. I heard the admiral was so furious he spilled his hot water and lemon all over his pants. Calls went out all over the world to find out who knew about the directive and who authorized it. Of course when they called me I just said that the Company was in transition between Mr. Bush and Admiral Tunney and I followed orders. From whom? Not from Clandestine, sirs, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t create policy, I make sure it’s carried out. Funny I knew the second I said it that I was never going to make the corner office, something that will piss off the wife far more than me.

But good God, 1979 and Jamaica is for a pleasant change the only place not going to shit. Well, not going to shit today. Flight to Argentina is next week and Claire is happy for the first time in years. Do we have to learn Spanish now? says my little one and just then I remember that we haven’t been in a Spanish-speaking country in three years. Judging by the number of calls she’s been making this month totally in Spanish, it seems she’s alerting all her fellow bitches that the eagle is about to land. Funny how for someone who couldn’t stop bitching about how much she hated this country and wanted to go back to Vermont, she hasn’t mentioned Vermont even once. I wonder if the new guy will want this paperweight. God knows I don’t want… or maybe I do. So distracted today. Shit, what was I thinking about? Wolfsbricker. Yugoslavia. The admiral catching a fit. I mean, shit, the Company was in effect breaking the law.

My son could use this sharpener. Fucking office is not going to miss one sharpener, and even if they do who gives a flying fuck? Like anybody in Jamaica is keeping any records. Sloppiest fucking place I’ve ever… actually that’s not true, Ecuador was far, far worse. I’m definitely getting angrier and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because we’re going back to fucking Argentina. I really don’t hate Argentina, and it will be nice to actually eat at an outside café and watch sexy Argentinian women for a change. It’s just this country. Shit. I’m not going to be the ten thousandth white man to fall for this country. I’m not falling for it. Or at least if I’m going to I should at least waste my life smoking pot in Treasure Beach with all the other washed-up hippies.

A quiet evening in Jamaica, the only place in the world right now that’s actually quiet. Because Iran, good fucking Christ, to think that’s where we were once headed to. And this fucking aw shucks heehaw president. Louis told me that not long after riding his redneck ass into office by tearing the Company a new one and calling us a national disgrace he’s already given us more orders than Ford and almost as many as Nixon. Of course he wouldn’t see it that way. A permanent attack of the conscience, this one. This guy wants to save some black people abroad, who knows, because he can’t do squat for the niggers in his own country. Let’s undermine apartheid, sure, because all you need are a pair of red shoes with heels to click. Undermine it for what? ANC has been funded by the Soviets for years because guess what, for all its shit, communism is more socially progressive than us. He wants to pump a lethal injection into apartheid and get rid of that Nazi maniac Ian Smith in Rhodesia. I know two of the guys working with BOSS, both of whom got their clumsy asses caught by the fucking Rhodesian Secret Police. It takes a whole new level of incompetence to get caught by an African secret police. Three of us caught by those morons and the fourth guy given up by BOSS itself. Boy were those South Africans pleased with themselves. We shouldn’t even be in fucking Africa, leave that to the fucking limeys and the fucking Belgians and the goddamn Portuguese, still so fucking bad at colonialism after all these years. Jesus Christ, Barry, somebody overhearing you might think you were turning liberal. Credit Louis at the very least to waking me up to how things really fucking go. Or maybe it was William Adler.

Sally is wondering if they will reassign her too. My secretary’s developed a little crush on me. It’s great to know somebody has. The wife is already teaching Aiden Spanish. Timothy doesn’t even remember speaking it. Boy was he mad when he heard we were leaving. Eediot business this, he said and threw his fork on his plate. Bad enough that he now refuses to eat American food and only wants crab and yellow-yam and corned pork and breadfruit. I had to remind the little bastard who was the man around here. Poor kid, he thinks I don’t know about his little Jamaican girlfriend, hell, I knew it from the second he told Aiden that superhero toys were eediot business — mind you, they were his toys. Damn kid thinking he knows what love is. Love is settling, that’s really all it is. Fucking settling.

Louis Johnson, my little compadre in ’76, got sent back to Central America, I’m guessing the School for the Americas needed some hand-holding this year. Gotta keep building that army to vanquish the forces of socialism and communism, and whatever ism washes up next week. Funny how we never liked each other, actually I couldn’t stand the wife-beating scumbag, but now he calls me all the time. Some shit about just needing to hear more than one sentence in English. I could have said, Well, if you stopped beating the crap out of your wife, you might actually have somebody to talk to, but that might have been tacky. But we’re talking about Clandestine, which he’s a part of and I’m not, and who really fucked things up. He thinks it’s Admiral Tunney, a man who even on a good day has just a cursory knowledge of how things work in the Company. Tunney’s a pencil pusher, I told him. He’s just biding time. Besides, who trusts a man who drinks hot water with lime instead of whiskey or even coffee? What next, peeing sitting down? No sir, Nixon’s the one who really fucked up the CIA. He never trusted the Company to begin with. Still you gotta admire the simplicity of his worldview, that the world is populated by people with him or against him, and shit, I’ve never even met the guy.

Because here was the problem with the weasel. You can’t go whole hog, downright creating a fucking culture of surveillance and then gripe when stuff gets leaked. Means you have so many people watching that you can’t even keep tabs on who’s watching who. Worse, to give the job to a fucking Bay of Pigs alum — and we know how competent they are. Say this about Louis, he pretty much knows and refuses to keep anything secret. The Defense secretary snooping on Kissinger or so I heard. Hard to believe Kissinger wouldn’t know about it. White House and Camp David bugged. Kissinger himself tapping his own aides and people, including me, I’m assuming, to contain leaks, and yet the leaks keep on coming. The problem is they picked somebody both me and Louis knew really well, hell, when Louis called me he was hiccupping in the phone how he couldn’t stop laughing. Chip Hunt. Holy fucking horseshit, Diflorio, here’s a fuckup that makes a fuckup go holy fuck, now that’s a fuckup. Jesus Christ, man, how does he do it? The man single-handedly ruined Uruguay. You think Tricky Dicky picked him because he’s reading Chip’s little spy novels? Anyway, that was all she wrote, besides it was over eight years ago and Nixie’s own little culture gave him a major fuck in the ass. And when he went down he took nearly everyone with him.

Funny, when Bill Adler called me that time in ’76 I blamed him for Richard Welch’s death in Greece. Said some bullshit about him leaking names of company people and jeopardizing their safety, but it was all bullshit. He knew and I knew it, I just had to say it. Fucking Nixon killed Richard Welch. Telling us to spread all sorts of shit in Greece that just blew up the war in Turkey over Cyprus. And then worse, letting that crap get leaked. Next thing you know Richard Welch and his poor wife — all killed. All fucking dead. Jesus Christ, a station chief. Fucking Nixon tried to ruin the FBI too as soon as Hoover croaked. And hell, who gives a shit in 1979?