by Steve Berry
At least I had Oliver’s gun.
I glanced back.
The gap was closing between us and the inflatable.
A crack rang out.
Rifle fire from the inflatable.
“Stay down,” I yelled to Coleen.
Another pop and the windscreen to my left shattered.
That was close.
And a lucky shot from a pitching boat to another pitching boat in near darkness.
Running no longer seemed the right move.
“Take the wheel,” I told Coleen.
She grabbed hold.
“Slow the throttle,” I said.
“For what?”
“Do it.”
I’d tried maybe seventy-five court-martials. My job always was to represent my client and obtain the best result possible. Sometimes that was for the military. Sometimes that was for the accused. That was the thing about JAG. You worked both sides. When representing the accused, most of my colleagues took winning to mean “how much punishment can I avoid,” since nearly every defendant was guilty of something. I never cared for that concession. I wanted an acquittal. A not guilty. An “I’m sorry, we made a mistake and should have never charged your client in the first place.”
That’s what I liked to hear.
So I learned to take a stand.
And stick with it.
I read once that nothing takes the place of persistence. Damn right. Not talent. I know a lot of lousy lawyers with talent. Not brilliance. Hell, unrewarded genius was almost the norm. Not education, since the world was full of smart derelicts.
Nope.
Persistence wins.
And like Einstein said, You have to learn the rules of the game, then you have to play better than everyone else.
So let’s play.
Our boat slowed.
I found the coin in my pocket.
The inflatable closed the gap between us.
I stood at the stern and held the coin up high, out over the water, the outline of the square plastic sleeve clear and distinctive, even in the dim light.
“Lower the rifle,” I hollered.
There was hesitation, so I made it clear, “You want me to drop it? You can shoot me, but I’m still going to drop it. Good luck finding it in this water, in the dark.”
These were acolytes. Hired help. If Valdez himself had been here I’d probably have to rethink this ploy. But with these guys their number one job was to please the boss. So far today they hadn’t had much success—they’d already lost the files. I could hear Valdez now. Don’t come back without my coin.
And I was right.
The rifle lowered.
The inflatable kept closing, its motor now in idle.
Thirty yards away.
“Hit the throttle and go like crazy when I tell you to,” I whispered to Coleen, keeping my lips still.
“Just say the word.”
Twenty yards.
“I give you the coin and you go away,” I yelled to the shadows in the inflatable.
“Sí, senor. You give the coin. We let you leave.”
Right. They came all the way out here, after being tipped off by a group of retired feds, just to get the coin? Sure, that’s what these guys wanted. But the people who’d supplied all of that intel wanted us dead, and the files we had either back in Cuba or at the bottom of the ocean. Otherwise they’d never make it out of American territorial waters.
I stood still, Oliver’s gun held tight in my hand, masked by my right thigh. All attention was on the coin. I felt like a magician working an illusion with misdirection.
Ten yards.
“Come and get it,” I said.
The inflatable hooked left, now leading with its long side, the idea to gently bump against our boat.
I braced myself and whispered to Coleen, “Now.”
She gunned the throttle.
The outboard sprang to life from idle.
Water churned up from the props.
The guys in the inflatable were momentarily surprised and I used that instance to raise my gun and send four rounds into their craft, making sure to puncture holes in the bow, midsection, and stern. Those things were tough and versatile, but not invincible.
The men scattered with each round.
Our boat bolted away.
I watched as they tried to give chase, but they were having trouble staying high in the water.
No way to catch us now.
Eventually, the thing would flounder.
Sure, they had their main vessel.
But we’d be long gone in the dark before they could ever give chase.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We cruised northward for over an hour. The night loomed clear, warm, and cloudless with a great wash of stars. Thankfully, the boat came with full gas tanks. Maybe the idea had been to set it ablaze with our corpses and the files on board, the thought of which sent a chill down my spine.
I was navigating by dead reckoning, in the dark, and figured we were now at or near Jupiter Island. No sense going any farther, as I was unsure of the cruising range. So I turned west and passed through an inlet into the St. Lucie River, following its twisting path to what was labeled a municipal dock operated by the city of Stuart. The time was approaching 10:00 P.M. Day one as a special agent for the Justice Department was drawing to a close. There’d been ups and downs, but I was in one piece and still had the coin and the files, which had to count for something.
We left the boat and walked from the waterfront into town, which seemed a colorful collection of clapboard and shingled buildings. Only eateries were open. I carried the waterproof case, the coin safe in my jean pocket, the gun tucked at my spine beneath my shirt. A bar and grill, Rick’s Oyster Dock, was doing a brisk business.
“Let’s eat something,” I said.
Coleen didn’t argue.
We stepped inside and found a table that fronted one of the sides open to the night, overlooking the river.
“Order some food. I like oysters, fish, shrimp. Don’t care. Just get lots of it and some sweet tea to drink.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have to make a call.”
And I took the case with me.
I doubted she was going anywhere without those files, so I was fairly certain she’d be there when I returned. On the walk over from the dock I’d noticed a pay phone outside the entrance to a motel next door to the restaurant. I used it to call Stephanie Nelle.
Collect.
She answered like she’d been waiting for me. I explained everything that had happened since a few hours ago, omitting only, for the moment, my exact location and the little I’d read in the files.
“I want you to stay put,” she said. “I’m sending people to get you.”
“No,” I told her.
“Cotton, this is just like the military. I give the orders, you obey them.”
“You have a problem,” I said. “It apparently involves both former and current members of the FBI. I’ve managed to attract the attention of at least half your problem. Let’s play this out and see where it leads.”
I was truly embracing my new role as bait.
“I can take Oliver and Jansen into custody,” she said. “Your testimony alone is enough to convict them of kidnapping and aggravated assault.”
“And that’s all you’re going to get. What about your issues at the FBI and within Justice? And there’s more going on here than you think.”
“You want to explain that?”
“Not at the moment. You’re just going to have to trust me that there is much more involved. I need some time to see where this leads.”
“I want those files,” she said.
And I was beginning to see why. “I’m going to ask you something and I want you to tell me the truth. I know I have no way of knowing if you’re lying, but could you humor me and give it a shot?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you know what’s in those files?”
“I really don’t. But I’ve read an old FBI intelligence assessment that speculates about what might be there. Juan Lopez Valdez is a former asset of both the FBI and the CIA. He may even still do some work for the CIA. I don’t know. Officially, he’s attached to the Cuban secret police, but he’s a man for hire, with no loyalties other than to himself. There are people here who want to know why, besides the coin, he chose to contact Foster. And those files could provide the answer.”
“They do.”
“You’ve read them?”
“Enough to know this is not going on 60 Minutes. This gets its own one-hour, prime-time special report.”
“Cotton, listen to me. You’ve been doing this for all of one day. You’ve done a great job. I really appreciate the effort. But let me handle this from here on.”
“You’ve yet to say a word to me about you talking to Benjamin Foster.”
Silence reigned for a few moments.
“It wasn’t necessary for you to know that. But I had to judge the man for myself.”
“He set me up to take the fall with Jansen and Oliver. He wanted them to take the files. He was able to do that, thanks to you.”
More silence.
“You wanted me out here because you said you liked the fact that I didn’t play well with others and I improvised. It’s bad enough that you gave me half the story, which led me into a trap. So how about you let me do this my way now.”
“And you’re not going to tell me a thing?”
“Let me play this out. If it leads nowhere, I’ll bail and turn it all over to you.”
This was the beginning of a pattern that would mark our relationship for many years to come. Sure, it was flawed, but we came to accept that rarely did either of us tell the other everything. My working relationship with Stephanie Nelle ran smooth but never straight. It also delivered results because we both possessed an iron purpose, and we were good at what we did.
“What do you want me to do about Tom Oliver?” she asked. “My inclination is to arrest him.”
“Leave him be. Give ’em a long leash.”
“And if that leads straight to you?”
The prospect of that was not encouraging, but I knew the correct answer to her question. “I’ll handle it.”
She didn’t like the situation, but finally agreed to my conditions.
“One day,” she told me. “That’s all I’ll give you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Keep in touch.”
I ended the call.
I stood for a moment and listened to the noise emerging from the restaurant where I’d left Coleen. The tinkle of laughter, the clink of glasses, the dozens of meshed conversations. Streetlamps pushed weak yellow light down over the black asphalt. I debated whether to make the next call, but decided it was the right thing to do.
I dialed my house.
Pam answered.
“I wanted to let you know I’m still okay,” I said to her.
“You sound tired.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Where are you?”
Stephanie had instructed me that no one was to know my mission or my whereabouts. “You know I can’t say.”
“How convenient. Too bad you didn’t have that excuse before.”
I closed my eyes and bit my tongue. I’d become accustomed to her not-so-subtle reminders of my infidelity. “I assure you, I’m on the job and it hasn’t been fun.”
“And what you did before was fun?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I called to tell you I’m okay and that I love you.”
“Both are always nice to hear. When will you be home?”
Never did she return those three words. Not once since all that had happened had she uttered them to me. More of my punishment. “I don’t know. But I’ll try to keep in touch.”
“Are you lying to me, Cotton? Again?”
Looking back, it was foolish to think that I could ever make amends. When you’re barely thirty, cocksure of everything, you tend to think that all can be made right.
But it can’t.
“I’m not lying to you, Pam. I’m working. Something important and hush-hush. You’re going to have to understand.”
“I understand, Cotton. I understand perfectly.”
And a click signaled she was gone.
I hung up the phone.
That call had been a bad mistake.
* * *
I returned to the restaurant where Coleen had ordered a seafood feast. I laid the waterproof case on the booth’s bench and slid in beside it, opposite her. Sure, I was here with a woman, but this was anything but sexual.
“Check-in with your parents? Let them know you won’t make curfew?”
“I do have a boss. And she’s not happy with all this.”
She held up her cell phone. “I tried Nate. No signal. These things are worthless.”
I chuckled. “Exactly why I don’t own one.”
We dug into the shrimp, fish, and oysters. I had a few hundred dollars and the credit card Stephanie had provided, on a Justice Department–secured account she’d told me. I shouldn’t be hesitant to use it. No way anyone could track its use. Only her, she’d said. Which didn’t provide me with any great measure of comfort.
“I’ve been thinking about what we read,” Coleen said. “Those reports confirm the common knowledge of Ray’s whereabouts before the assassination. He did go to Alabama, then Mexico, ending up in L.A. in the fall of 1967.”
“Which may not be meaningful,” I said. “The King assassination has been investigated to death by everybody and their brother. Those documents could have been tailored to the facts, not the other way around.”
“There’s something you don’t know.”
Those were five words no lawyer ever wanted to hear. They always spelled disaster with a capital D.
“My father told me some things a few weeks ago. Things he’s never spoken of before. I suspect that my mother might have known bits and pieces, but she never said a word. That was her way. Sadly, she died years ago. I’d basically given up hope that my father would ever open up. But finally, just recently, he talked to me about Martin Luther King Jr.”
I munched on a piece of fish and waited for her to explain.
“He told me about COINTELPRO and the FBI surveillance of King and everyone around him.”
Which Foster had mentioned to me, too.
“He also told me that there were spies within the SCLC. Paid informants who ratted King out to the FBI.”
I was curious. “How did he know that?”
“It was his job to find them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I kept eating the fish while also digesting what she was telling me.
“I’ve read many books,” she said, “on Hoover, the FBI, and King. It’s something Nate and I have in common.”
“And the fact your father was there made it even more interesting.”
She smiled, as a proud daughter should. “It was a thrill to see his name in those books. He was even mentioned in declassified FBI reports. A lot of those are now public record. It’s amazing how much Hoover hated King. He called him the burrhead.” She shook her head. “The sad part is that King, in many ways, made it easy for Hoover. He had a weakness for women. My father told me all about it.”
I listened as she explained how King had possessed a string of mistresses across the country, in town after town. The FBI first learned about it from a DC party that happened at the Willard Hotel, in January 1964. Nineteen reels of tape revealed how King liked to use raunchy language, that he smoked, drank, and told off-color jokes. More tapes from other hotels revealed more of the same, including the affairs themselves.
“Hoover believed that King’s moral lapses could be used to discredit him,” she said. “Not only in the eyes of his hardcore, black supporters, but whites, too. He wanted to release transcripts of the tapes, but LBJ said no. And even the great J. Edgar Hoover
had to think twice before defying the president of the United States. But he did defy him. Instead of leaking the tapes, in December 1964 he had an anonymous package mailed to King’s home that contained some of the worst sexual recordings along with a typewritten note.”
That note would later come to light during all of the FBI abuse hearings. A shocking narrative that the FBI itself had to officially acknowledge had been sent.
King, look into your heart. You are a clergyman and you know it. You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader. But you are done. Your honorary degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce), and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat, you are done. The American public will know you for what you are, an evil, abnormal beast. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
The package was opened by Coretta King, who was not happy about the revelations. The incident definitely placed a strain on the marriage. And was there a suggestion of suicide? Or was the but one way simply to have King step down from any leadership in the civil rights movement?
Historians continue to debate that point.
“The ploy had the opposite effect,” she said. “Coretta King would not allow the FBI to intimidate her. Nor would she allow her husband to be silenced. No matter what he might have done to hurt her. My father was there. He told me what happened. Coretta displayed a remarkable patience. It’s incredible to think that the FBI would do what it did, but it illustrates how much Hoover hated King.”
I thought I would see if she knew what Foster had been unwilling to tell me. “Did your father ever mention a man named Jim Jansen?”
She shook her head. “That was the name on the memos we read.”
“He’s also the guy who tried to blow me up and shot at us when we left Fort Jefferson in that floatplane.”
I could see the revelation surprised her.
“My father never mentioned the name. He told me, though, that people in the SCLC were concerned about King’s infidelity. Its revelation would have hurt the movement. King tried to justify it by his travel schedule. The loneliness of being on the road. He told my father that he was away from home twenty-five days a month. Women were his form of anxiety reduction.”
