In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

7
Roberto
Twenty-one hours later I was in the thick of it. A roly-poly Portuguese
colonel, Santos Castro, sat before me in the bare servants'
quarters of an abandoned house in Ambriz and told me he was
surrounded by ambitious fools . . His face was shadowed by the light
of a candle, whose flame danced in the ocean breeze. His muted,
conspiratorial voice was difficult to hear above the crashing surf.
"They all want Angola," he said, "but I have the key. Without me
they have nothing."
Castro was one of the people I had come to see, but it hadn't been
easy to reach him. It had in fact been a long and wearing day.
To begin with, Makala had arrived late for our departure, and the
FNLA truck that was to take us to the airport never showed up. We
had to ride in a CIA carryall, with U.S. embassy plates, and that
upset the guards at the military gate of Ndjili Airport. Eventually
bribes and phone calls got us in, and two of Mobutu's mercenary
pjlots, a Dane and a Belgian, flew us to Carmona in a thirty-year-old
DC-4. As we flew I leaned over their shoulders in the cockpit,