Libra - Don Delillo [59]
“But imagine forbidding him airtime.”
“I’ll try to get worked up about it. Give me ten minutes.”
“I know the signs, old boy.”
“What signs?”
“When you sweep through the house guzzling gin. I know exactly what it means. Nostalgic for Guatemala.”
Some people thought Beryl had money. It was one of the false impressions that collected around her. What she actually had was a small picture-framing shop on Wisconsin Avenue, strictly a marginal income—lithographs, photographs, framing. Other people thought she was creative. One of the softer arts, quilt-making, water colors. She had a look and manner people took to be unconventional in a certain way, a kind of reclusiveness in a crowd. She wore soft clothes. She draped herself in casual layers, a smallish woman half buried in pastels. There was always the idea she was in quiet retirement from some fear or pain. She bought factory-outlet moccasins, never wore jewelry, kept snapshots of her mother in favorite books. People thought she was a canned-soup heiress who painted seascapes with birds. She ate soft food, spoke softly, with a slight huskiness, a sexiness. She was very sexy, at forty-seven. There was still that smoky little thing about her. The sexy swaying walk, the dark voice. She had a dry way of delivering friendly insults directly into people’s chests. She walked softly swaying into a room and you could sense anticipation in the group. They began preparing their laughter before she said a word.
It was seen as a mark of the Parmenters’ sophistication that she raked the Agency in mixed company while Larry looked on grinning.
Not that she didn’t mean what she said.
“No. I am not making fun. I admire what you did in Guatemala. If not politically, then in other ways. It was practically bloodless. I certainly admire that.”
“It was a textbook operation.”
“Of course there would have been no need for an operation if the Guatemalans hadn’t taken back all that land belonging to United Fruit. ”
“Is that what happened? Oh.”
“I love the way you say textbook operation.”
Yes. It was also the peak experience of Larry’s career, centering on a radio station supposedly run by rebels from a jungle outpost in Guatemala. The broadcasts actually originated in a barn in Honduras and the messages were designed to put pressure on the leftist government and arouse anxiety in the people. Rumors, false battle reports, meaningless codes, inflammatory speeches, orders to non-existent rebels. It was like a class project in the structure of reality. Parmenter wrote some of the broadcasts himself, going for vivid imagery, fields of rotting bodies, fighter pilots defecting with their planes. A real pilot tossed dynamite sticks out the window of his Cessna. A real bomb fell on a parade ground, sending up smoke in an ominous column. The government fell nine days after an invasion force of five thousand troops was said to be advancing on the capital. The force materialized then, several trucks and a crowded station wagon, about a hundred and fifty ragged recruits.
That was nine years ago. Larry became involved in proprietaries for a time, legally incorporated businesses actually financed and controlled by CIA. When the Agency wanted to do something interesting in Kurdistan or Yemen, it filed for incorporation in Delaware. It was during this period that he came into contact with a number of Agency assets who had important holdings in sensitive parts of the hemisphere. A man from United Fruit, a man from the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Trust (it was George de Mohrenschildt as a matter of fact). Merchant banks, sugar companies, arms dealers. A curious convergence of motives and holdings. Hotel interests here, gambling interests there. Men with vivid histories, sometimes including prison. He saw there was a natural kinship between business and intelligence work. And he realized that the companies he was helping set up as cover for Agency operations held potential for legitimate profits—and beyond that, for enormous personal gain.
Contact with wealthy and influential men was a bracing