The Second Shooter

by Chuck Hustmyre

  "What do you mean, program assassins?" Jake asked. "Are you talking about training people to kill?"

  "No," Gordon said. "I mean program, like in the Manchurian Candidate, except the real thing. I'm talking about programming a person to kill someone, anyone, on command."

  "Like the president," Stacy said.

  Gordon nodded. "Like the president."

  Jake jumped to his feet, still talking to Gordon but jabbing a finger at Favreau. "You're as crazy as he is if you expect me to believe the CIA programmed him to assassinate John F. Kennedy because he was having an affair with a German woman who might have been working for the Russians."

  "No, I don't expect you to believe that," Gordon said. "Because that's not what happened. That was just the cover story."

  "The cover story?" Jake said.

  Gordon motioned for Jake to sit back down on the sofa. "Just hear me out."

  Jake didn't move.

  "Please," Gordon said.

  Reluctantly, Jake sat down.

  "Kennedy's affair with Ellen Rometsch ended quietly and was never a serious threat to national security," Gordon said. "Hoover told the attorney general that his brother was screwing a suspected Soviet agent, and Bobby, who always cleaned up Jack's messes, had her deported. End of story. The real reason Kennedy was killed was because he was about to disband the CIA."

  Jake sighed and leaned back against the thin cushion. "None of this is helping. I want to know the reason why people are chasing us today, right now."

  "I'm telling you the reason," Gordon said. "You just don't want to hear it because it contradicts what you think you know, what you've been taught all your life."

  Jake stared at him for a long time. There were people chasing them. Powerful people. There was no denying that. Maybe, if he listened to Gordon McCay's roundabout explanation, it might swerve toward something close to the truth. "Okay," Jake said. "So tell me why Kennedy was going to disband the CIA."

  Gordon raised a finger for each point. "The Bay of Pigs in '61. The Cuban Missile Crisis in '62. And not one, not two, but three failed attempts to assassinate Castro." Gordon held up all five fingers of one hand. "Every one of them was an Agency disaster. The first two, of course, were international news for months, and although history painted Kennedy as the hero of the missile crisis for forcing Khrushchev to back down, the real question was, how did the Soviets sneak those missiles into Cuba right under the CIA's nose? The three attempts the Agency made to kill Castro, as boneheaded and unrealistic as a couple of them were, stayed secret until much later, but by the summer of 1963, Kennedy had lost all faith in the CIA.

  "In fact, he was becoming convinced that the Agency was actually working against him. So he decided to shut it down and split its functions between DOD and the State Department, but he was smart enough to know that the timing was crucial. He had to do it before the 1964 presidential election so the Agency couldn't use its covert resources to back the Republican candidate."

  "How do you shut down the CIA?" Stacy asked.

  "By executive order," Gordon said. "Bobby was already working on a draft of the order, and the president was going to sign it January 1, 1964, ten months before the election." He paused, then said, "But the agency found out what the president was planning and decided to shut him down first."

  "Who in the CIA signed off on that?" Stacy said, the disbelief clear in her voice. "What did they do, pass a memo around outlining the plan to kill the president?"

  "One or two senior people inside the Agency is all it would have taken," Gordon said. "The rest of the operation was outsourced. And remember, we're talking about an agency with a lot of practical experience in coups and assassinations: Iran in '53, Guatemala in '54, Laos in '57, Laos again in '58, Haiti in '59, Ecuador in '61."

  Stacy looked hard at Gordon. "So you're saying a handful of people inside the CIA killed the president of the United States to protect their government jobs?"

  "There was a lot more at stake than just salaries and pensions," Gordon said. "The Mandarins at the Agency dug into the goat entrails and saw the future."

  "What future?" Stacy asked.

  "A future with a bottomless and untraceable black budget that would allow them to stick their grubby little fingers into any crooked pie they wanted, anywhere in the world. And there was only one man standing in their way."

  "So this black budget," Jake said. "Where was it—"

  "Heroin," Gordon said without waiting for Jake to finish asking the question. "From the Golden Triangle."

  "Hold on," Jake said, raising his hand like a traffic cop. "Are you suggesting that the CIA—"

  "I'm not suggesting anything," Gordon said, interrupting Jake again. "I'm telling you that for more than a decade, while we had soldiers getting blown up in rice paddies, the CIA was smuggling heroin into Vietnam and shipping it, by air freight companies that it owned, to the biggest and most lucrative drug market in the world, the United States of America."

  "Like Air America," Stacy said in a low voice, almost like a whisper.

  Gordon nodded. "Like Air America and half a dozen others that it used to make tens of millions of dollars in the heroin racket."

  "That's ridiculous," Jake said.

  "You're right," Gordon said. "It is ridiculous. But it's also true. Our premier intelligence agency was willing to poison a whole generation of Americans so it could rig elections in other countries and assassinate foreign leaders whose policies it disagreed with. And that is certainly ridiculous."

  Jake dismissed the allegations with a wave of his hand. "I've heard all this conspiracy crap before." He glared at Gordon. "All my life, in fact, thanks to you."

  "Like I told you, read history," Gordon said. "It's all there. Some of it between the lines, but it's there. All the covert shit the CIA is guilty of: coups in Haiti and Ecuador, assassinations in the Dominican Republic and the Congo, a secret war in Angola. They even toppled the government of Australia, for God's sake. And it all costs money, lots of money. Ask any DEA agent. Drugs are the currency of the covert world, and heroin is the gold standard."

  Stacy stared at Gordon. Finally, she said, "Holy shit."

  Gordon nodded. "Yeah. Holy shit."

  Chapter 31

  For a long moment no one spoke. Then Jake said, "I'm not buying it."

  "Not buying what, exactly?" Gordon asked.

  "Any of it. That the US government is in the heroin smuggling business or that there's a way to brainwash people into becoming assassins. You mentioned The Manchurian Candidate. Well, I saw the movie. Not only was it fiction, it was stupid." He turned to Favreau. "What did they do, call you on the telephone with a code word or a phrase from a nursery rhyme that they had embedded in your brain? And then what? You walked around like a zombie until you wound up on the grassy knoll. Then you shot the president."

  "No," Favreau said. "That's not what happened."

  "Then tell me what did happen," Jake said. "Tell me how this brainwashing program worked."

  "I didn't know they were putting me through the program," Favreau said. "I didn't even know there was a program."

  "But how exactly did they do it?"

  "They put me in a house in Virginia, out in the country. They said it was a safe house. They played music all the time, even at night when I was sleeping. It was always there in the background. Sometimes weird sounds would come through the speakers. Harsh sounds that made me jump. Just randomly. And they showed me lots of films. Crazy movies that made no sense."

  "What kind of movies?"

  Favreau closed his eyes. "I don't remember them. Nothing but bits and pieces. Just little scenes."

  "Tell me about one of the scenes."

  Opening his eyes, Favreau said, "There was one...I saw over and over. A man in a white coat, a lab coat, like a scientist would wear. Or a doctor. He was explaining how to boil a rabbit, and he was doing it while he talked. He set a pot of water on a stove, I assume it was water, and heated it until it was boiling. Then he
threw a live rabbit into the pot. He held the rabbit down in the water with some kind of...cooking device, like something you might mash potatoes with."

  "That's disgusting," Stacy said.

  As Favreau spoke, Jake noticed a peculiar look come over his face, almost like he was getting sick. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," Favreau said. "It's just that every time I think about it, it's almost like I'm back there. Like it's happening all over again."

  "Didn't you find all of that really strange," Jake asked, "the twenty-four-hour music, the weird sounds, the crazy movies?"

  "I learned later that everything they gave me to eat or drink was drugged. Even the toothpaste. At first they told me I was there for a briefing. They didn't say what it was about. Just some mission they wanted me to do. The first couple of days we went over basic techniques. Tradecraft they call it. Getting from here to there unobserved. Shooting. Wireless communications."

  "And then?" Jake asked.

  Favreau closed his eyes again as if trying to recall. Then he opened them and shook his head. "After a while you stop wondering what's going on. From then on the days get kind of blurry."

  "How long were you there?" Stacy asked.

  "Three weeks," Favreau said. "But it didn't feel like that. It felt like a week at most. There were no calendars in the house, no newspapers, no television. No clocks even. I didn't find out how long I'd been there until after, until I saw a newspaper."

  Jake snapped his fingers. "And just like that you were programmed to kill the president?"

  Favreau smiled. "To be honest, I didn't need much programming. Not after seeing the evidence, the surveillance films and the dossier on Ellen Rometsch. I was already convinced the president had been compromised and that he was acting as a Soviet agent."

  "What about Lee Harvey Oswald?" Jake asked. "Did they brainwash him too?"

  "He went through the program, but his was an even longer version," Favreau said. "I heard he was there for two months."

  "Why Oswald?" Jake said. "What was so special about him?"

  "I don't know why they picked him," Favreau said.

  "I can answer that," Gordon said.

  Jake looked at him.

  "If you think about it," Gordon said, "Oswald was the perfect candidate. An ex-Marine with a history of disciplinary problems. A communist who defected to the Soviet Union and renounced his American citizenship but who later came back with a Russian wife. A Castro supporter who started a one-man chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and got himself arrested in New Orleans for passing out pro-Castro flyers. The CIA couldn't have asked for a better patsy."

  "But why pick a guy who can't shoot?" Stacy said.

  "Is that what you heard?" Gordon asked. "That Oswald couldn't shoot?"

  She nodded.

  "Then I guess that depends on your idea of what a good shot is."

  "I heard, or read, the same thing," Jake said.

  "The Marine Corps has three levels of shooters," Gordon explained. "Same now as back in the fifties when Oswald was in. Marksman is the lowest, sharpshooter is the middle, and expert is the highest. The basic qualification course requires Marines to engage targets out to five hundred yards. Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter, which makes him an average shot by Marine Corps standards, but makes him a lot better than most everybody else."

  Nobody said anything for a minute. Then Favreau leaned forward in his chair. "For years after Dallas, I thought I had helped stop the spread of communism." He focused on Jake. "Then I read one of your father's books, and I—"

  "My father is a retired FBI agent," Jake said. Then he saw Gordon close his eyes for a few seconds as the words cut into him, just as Jake had intended them to.

  When Gordon opened his eyes, there were tears in them. "I'm sorry, Jake."

  "For what?" Jake asked.

  "For leaving you and your mother."

  "We did okay without you."

  "I know you did," Gordon said. "She's a strong woman. And I'll be forever grateful to Lee Miller."

  Jake found himself nodding. Not really accepting Gordon McCay's apology. He would never do that. But acknowledging it. That would be all right. He looked at Favreau. "Go on. What about...his book?"

  Favreau continued, "After I read that book, I knew everything I had been told was a lie. It wasn't Western democracy I had helped save, it was the CIA."

  Jake shook his head. "All those conspiracy theories were investigated and disproved years ago. By the Warren Commission, by the Church Committee, by the House Select Committee on Assassinations."

  Gordon smiled. "So you have done some reading."

  "The JFK assassination used to be kind of a hobby of mine," Jake said. "I even wrote a term paper about it in high school."

  "What was your thesis?" Gordon asked.

  "That Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone."

  "Because the government said so?"

  "No," Jake said. "Because you said he didn't."

  Gordon looked at Jake for a long moment. "I understand."

  But Jake wasn't sure what Gordon McCay, his biological father, was claiming to have understood. He didn't ask, though.

  Gordon cleared his throat. "Just so you know, not all of the official investigations reached the same conclusion that you did about Oswald. The final report by the House Select Committee on Assassinations said that Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy. Their words, not mine. I can show you the report if you want." He glanced around the cluttered motorhome. "I have a copy of it around here somewhere."

  "I read it," Jake said. "But that report was a product of its time, the post-Watergate era, and of a generation that saw three of its heroes cut down in their prime by lone assassins. People were in the mood to believe in conspiracies, especially government conspiracies, because that was a lot more comfortable than the truth, that one nut with a gun could change the fate of the whole world."

  Jake turned to Stacy, who had been quiet for a while. "I hope you're not taking any of this seriously."

  "Let me show you just one more thing," Gordon said.

  "No," Jake said, turning back to him. "I've seen enough."

  Gordon stood and stepped away. "Not the House report. Something much better."

  Jake stayed silent as Gordon rummaged through the motorhome, digging through more files crammed into nooks. When he came back he dropped another stack of paper beside the Senate report, but this second stack dwarfed the first. It was at least six inches thick. The cover page was a CIA memorandum, the top of which was stamped 'SECRET—EYES ONLY'. The memorandum was dated '16 MAY 1973'. The subject line read "Family Jewels."

  "I hope you're not expecting me to read that," Jake said.

  "No," Gordon said. "But I can summarize it for you."

  Jake glanced at Stacy. She gave him a slight shrug. He turned back to Gordon and nodded.

  Gordon pushed the stack of paper a couple of inches closer to Jake. "That's a seven-hundred-page CIA report that took fifteen years of fighting under the Freedom of Information Act to get. It documents decades of CIA crimes: drug testing on mental patients, the intentional release of whooping cough in Tampa and yellow fever in Savannah, large scale illegal domestic wire-tapping, burglaries and bombings, and the assassinations of foreign officials, including Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Lumumba in the Congo."

  "Does it say they killed Kennedy?" Jake asked.

  Gordon shook his head. "No."

  Jake pushed the heavy report back toward Gordon. "Then how's it relevant?"

  Favreau said, "Because the CIA hired me to make sure President Kennedy died in Dallas on November 22, 1963."

  "Okay, I believe you," Jake said. "I'm convinced that you killed the president of the United States." He stood up and pulled the Glock pistol from the small of his back, the pistol he'd taken from the security guard at the Washington Field Office. He pointed it across the coffee table at Favreau.

  "Jake!" Stacy shouted as she sprang to her feet.
>
  Ignoring her, Jake said to Favreau, "You're under arrest."

  A long silence followed, during which no one moved, no one spoke. Then from outside, Jake heard tires rolling to a stop on the trailer park's gravel driveway. He heard a car door open. Probably one of Gordon McCay's Happy Valley neighbors returning home from a trip to the mini-mart with a bag of chips, a six-pack of beer, and a handful of lottery tickets.

  Then Favreau said, "Would you rather arrest me for killing President Kennedy fifty years ago...or help me stop the assassination of President Omar tomorrow?"

  ***

  The Suburban turned off the two-lane highway onto the horseshoe-shaped gravel driveway that curved through the trailer park. The sign read 'Happy Valley'. Max Garcia didn't see anything happy about it, and it definitely wasn't in a valley. Just a few dozen old trailers and battered motorhomes draped over concrete pads and set on a landscape as flat as a pool table.

  "Up ahead on the right," Blackstone said, staring at the satellite image on his laptop display. "Number thirty-six."

  They drove past a Ford Fairmont, circa 1980s, sitting on cinderblocks next to a shit-brown trailer. The brake drums and lugs on the Ford were rusted, and the double front window of the trailer was covered with cardboard. Happy Valley reminded Garcia of the poor white trash trailer parks dotting south Florida.

  They were three-quarters through the bend at the bottom of the horseshoe when Blackstone looked up from his laptop and scanned the trailers and RVs to their right front. He pointed to an old Winnebago with a tall antenna jutting up from the roof. "That's it. That's the one."

  The driver let off the gas and the Suburban coasted toward the motorhome.

  Chapter 32

  "I already felt like I had fallen down the rabbit hole and was trapped in an alternate universe. Then he springs this on me. Someone's going to kill the president. All of a sudden this isn't about history. This isn't about John F. Kennedy. This is about right now. This is about Noah Omar."