A Brief History of Seven Killings

by James, Marlon

  So Wolfsbricker sends a message to the admiral that the CIA is out of business in Yugoslavia until the order is rescinded and he wasn’t kidding.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?

  Did I think that or say it out loud? Nobody’s here and it’s a quiet Kingston evening. I really need to go home. Claire’s bitching about having to move one second, then calling all her friends in Buenos Aires as if they’re really her friends to
ask if the American school has gone to the dogs. Meanwhile I’m trying to think who do I know still in Argentina and who would I actually want to talk to? God, maybe we can just go back to simpler times where I meet with whoever is there to make sure the president’s hands don’t get dirty, brief them about what’s going on in their world, slip them some cash and promise these itchy-fingered bastards that sure I can look into the procurement of some new toys. And if they were especially good, we’d even organize a nice little holiday at Fort Bragg.

  Lord, it’s a hell of a thing to miss days when work actually worked. Me in Argentina, hearing from an agent in La Paz that we finally got Che. I don’t even know why I’m thinking about Che Guevara. I was thinking about Argentina and how much it’s changed since 1967. Claire, the way she is on the phone you’d think she’s just slipping back into a space her friends kept warm for her. That’s my wife, always assuming everything is exactly as she left it. I think she’s just happy to get the fuck out of Jamaica. When she told me that she and Nelly Matar had had words, boy was she pissed off when I added finally. Such fucking hypocrites these Syrians in Jamaica, and all so goddamn vulgar. I mean, I know they were shopkeepers, but at least the Chinese are never like that.

  —I merely asked if Matar’s Cash and Carry Downtown was her family’s place. I mean, nothing’s wrong with an honest business. For some reason she took great, great offense.

  —Can’t imagine why.

  —Oh please, Barry. Either you’re a shopkeeper or you’re a snob. You can’t be both. Besides, if I had to tell her one more time that the kinds of hats she wears are only meant for days at the races I would have just yanked the damn thing off her head.

  Always thinking about the other person, that’s my wife. I am an accountant. An efficiency guy. This is why the strangest bunch of fucking people think they can unload whatever shit on me. I mean, I get it—nobody seeking crucial info would ever think to ask Barry Diflorio. One other thing the Mrs. doesn’t seem to know. Argentina is still in the middle of a fucking shit show.

  The Egyptians used to strip their rabble-rousers buck naked, bolt them down on all fours, cover them in bitch piss and let a bunch of dogs loose that would mistake them for bitches in heat and butt-fuck the poor losers. And this Shah was worse. Yet four days into February shit hit the fan. Roger Theroux called me. Bill Adler was at best a fucking mediocre agent but Roger was the real deal, maybe the best we got that was actually American. I knew somebody in Washington who knew both Roger and me, asked if I wanted to see his report on Iran. Theroux said something way different from what the Company told Carter. He was right there, on the ground, and said that it was like Cuba in 1959, only worse because this was all re ligious.

  I can see why a report like this wouldn’t make sense to Carter, or anybody. Religion? Revolution is liberals, hippies, communists, Baader-Meinhof bullshit, and the thing driving this was religion? Come on, it’s nineteen seventy fucking nine. Half of these Saudi and Iranian kids were living in Paris, wearing tight jeans, getting butt-fucked more than the average American fairy—how did religion rise again? And then Roger Theroux got kidnapped.

  They roughed him up pretty bad. Accused him right away that he was CIA, set up some sham court, convicted him and sentenced him to death all in less than a month. Thank God or Allah, I guess, that Roger knew his Koran. When I finally spoke to him he said, Barry, I demanded to see that fucking Mullah. When the fucker finally showed up, because believe me he took his time, I said, look, you can go through it and go through it again, but nowhere in the Koran is this kind of action sanctioned. And if you do this you go against the will of your own God and Prophet. They let him go. And even with all that, two days ago still came like a fucking surprise to Washington. You gotta wonder: How does something manage to be surprising and inevitable at the same time?

  I don’t think she’s read anything about Argentina. Probably best to leave that alone for now, besides I’m sure that things haven’t affected her friends much. Will she at least miss the house? She certainly put a lot into it, but she was always like that. Even if she was staying in a hotel for two days she had to rearrange it, make it hers. I’m trying to think of what I’ll miss, other than jerk chicken. What the fuck, Barry Diflorio, three years and you sound like you were visiting via the Love Boat. Maybe I should tell her. That neither of the poets she used to invite over for dinner has been heard of since 1977. Or the dancer, or that white-haired homosexual Umberto she thought was so charmingly communist. I can see him wearing white, head to toe, right up to the very last.

  When that bomb blasted its way through that Buenos Aires apartment building in ’78, for a second I thought it was de las Casas. But he’s back here in Jamaica, probably to finish what he couldn’t in 1976 and Lord knows what that will be. I do know that he is not to be touched. Worse, he knows it. And nobody is replacing me, though somebody is definitely replacing Louis. Far as I know he was even supposed to have landed a few days ago. I don’t know if my not even knowing his name is Clandestine being efficient or the agency being incompetent. At least somebody thinks it’s not wise to close the book on Jamaica just yet. You never know with this country, these people. Sometimes it sounds like I’m talking about the Philippines.

  I still want to know who wrote that damn report and who authorized it, or how fucking soft is this president that they would need to goose up that report so badly. Not in a revolutionary or even a prerevolutionary situation. Jesus Christ. Then three days ago, the rebels finally overwhelm the Shah’s troops and everybody is looking on stunned. Everybody but Roger Theroux.

  And I’m looking at an office that I won’t have to ever see again, wondering how much I tell the wife. Umberto is going to hit her the most, she’s been calling their home for weeks now, convinced that they have either moved or she must have written down the wrong number. At one point she even asked me if they gave her a wrong number on purpose, and I really didn’t know what the hell to answer. The weirdest thing is that when she asks her other friends about him they have nothing to say. I mean, it’s so strange that none of them say anything. Not even the Figueroas, who live only five doors down. Even if they don’t know what specifically happened to him, they know something happened.

  Politics shape policy. That’s been on my mind all week. That and Bill Adler. He called me again two days ago, funnily enough, both him and Louis. He was feeling particularly pissed off about being finally kicked out of the U.K.

  —Come on, Bill. As small as America’s dick is, those limeys will stretch across the Atlantic to suck it.

  —Good point. I knew I was biding time, but was kinda hoping, you know.

  —Bad form, even for an ex-agent.

  —Not ex. Fired.

  —Tomato, tomahto. How’s Santiago?

  —I hear it’s sunny in the summer. Really, Diflorio, Brzezinski won’t find this conversation half as interesting as Kissinger did.

  —Maybe not, but didn’t you hear? We’re cutting costs all around. Anybody waiting for their phones to be debugged is shit out o’ luck. Speaking of cutting costs, how’s—

  —How’s that broken record you can’t seem to fucking fix?

  —Touchy.

  —It’s one motherfucker of a February in case you haven’t been paying attention. Everybody’s touchy.

  —What do you want, Adler?

  —What makes you think I want something?

  —Aw, honey, you called because you’re all lonely?

  —Never met a guy in the field who wasn’t, Diflorio. Then again, you’re an—

  —Accountant. You know, if we’re going to be friends, you really have to stop calling me—

  —Accountant?

  —No, Diflorio.

  —Don’t be so smarmy, Diflorio, it doesn’t suit you.

  —If you knew what suited me you’d call me Bar, or Barry, or Bernard, like my mother-in-law. Now for the second time, what can I do for you?

  —Did you see all that stuff about Iran?

  —Doe
s disco suck?

  —Just making chat.

  —No, you’re making small talk. I heard John Barron’s writing a sequel to his KGB book.

  —Might as well, Lord knows we have to ferret out those KGB sleeper agents.

  —And the traitors who support them.

  —Who would that be? The Bill in his book? I read that I’m an alcoholic skirt chaser who’s constantly broke.

  —So you’ve read it?

  —Of course I’ve read it. I’m surprised that you’re taking this wannabe agent so seriously.

  —His book is at the very least as entertaining as yours.

  —Fuck you. Have another book coming, by the way.

  —Of course you do. You have at least a thousand more lives to fuck up. By the way, how’s your buddy Cheporov?

  —Who?

  —Nifty. Very skillful. But shit, Adler, even the Daily Mail knows you’ve been talking to Cheporov.

  —Don’t know who—

  —Edgar Anatolyevich Cheporov, Novosti News Agency in London. He’s KGB. Go ahead. I’ll just sit here while you act all aghast that you didn’t know. Mind you, aghast is hard to pull off without me seeing your face.

  —Cheporov isn’t KGB.

  —And I wear briefs, not boxers. You’ve been in contact with him since 1974 at least.

  —I don’t know anybody at Novosti News.

  —My dear Bill, you will simply have to do better. First you say you don’t know him, then you say he isn’t KGB. Should we pause while you get your thoughts together? If you didn’t know Cheporov was KGB, you’re either very stupid or very gullible, or maybe you just need some money. How much did Cuban intelligence pay you? A million?

  —A million? You don’t know Cuba.

  —Lord knows you do. What do you want, you fucker?

  —Information.

  —How much? A treasure trove? Wasn’t that your exact words to the KGB when you tried to whore yourself out?

  —I’m not asking for information, prick, I’m giving it. Some of it might even concern you, fucking Yale boy.