by R.J. Ellory
The line was there, and he was going to cross it.
41
The fact that neither of the agents in the Oklahoma City office had heard of Travis raised doubts in his mind. Had they heard of him, it would have confirmed two things: that the Kansas City office had forewarned them that Travis might appear and that Travis was onto something that the Bureau wished to keep under wraps. But then again, even as he was introducing himself to the Oklahoma agents, Travis saw the flaw in his own thinking. Their ignorance could simply mean that maximum care was being taken to preserve the confidentiality of the Seneca Falls investigation. Surely only those who were directly involved in such a cover-up would be apprised of all the facts? Regardless, Travis knew that nothing would move forward until he established the precise whereabouts and movements of Andris Varga prior to his death, and the only way that such a thing seemed feasible was with Bureau resources.
The agents seemed eager to assist Travis in whichever way they could. Ostensibly, he was just another agent in the field; it would have been strange for them to do anything other than offer their unconditional assistance. The junior man, half a dozen years younger than Travis, was called Alan Lacey. The senior agent, of the same rank as Travis but three or four years older, was called Donald Kline. Kline took the lead, asked questions, ventured suggestions. He looked closely at the picture that Travis showed him, the print card, the small diagram of the tattoo.
“You say he is Hungarian?” Kline asked.
“Yes, name of Andris Varga.”
“I worked in New York before I was posted here,” Kline said. “Had a partner who dealt directly with those coming in from Hungary, among other places. This was a couple of years ago, primarily political asylum applications. I am sure there were Hungarians. Or maybe Czechoslovakians…” Kline paused in thought. “No, I’m sure it was Hungary. It was at the time of the civil unrest in ’56.”
“Do you remember any details?”
“No specifics,” Kline said. “The Bureau was interested in the potential espionage aspect, most of Eastern Europe being Communist, but it ran far above my partner’s clearance level and he didn’t move on it. That kind of thing goes out of federal jurisdiction into national security, and then the CIA pick it up.”
“You ever hear of people with tattoos like this?” Travis asked.
“No, never heard of that before.”
“Do you remember any names?”
“I don’t think he ever mentioned names. And even if he had, it would have been nothing more than an offhand comment, you know? And more than two years ago.”
“Do you remember the name of the operation?”
“Yes, that I do remember. It was called Chrysanthemum.”
“Operation Chrysanthemum. And it was a political asylum operation?”
“I really don’t know any specifics, Agent Travis. I’m sorry.”
“Do you know if the case was directed from the New York office?”
“Yes, I’m sure it was. That’s where I was posted at the time. I’ve only been down here six months. I was four years in D.C., six years in New York, and now I’m here for as long as needed.”
“Do you still know anyone in the New York office?”
“Sure, I know all of them… all of them who are still there, for sure.”
Travis looked at Kline, then at Lacey, and then back at Kline.
“I’m sorry, Agent Lacey…”
Lacey smiled and shrugged. “I’m heading out to lunch anyway. You want I should bring you something back?”
Travis declined, but Kline asked for a sandwich, ham on rye, and a bottle of root beer.
Once Lacey had gone, Travis asked Kline to sit with him in Kline’s office. He closed the door behind him, and when he sat down, Kline already had an anxious expression on his face.
“What’s the deal here, Travis?”
“I don’t know that I can actually give you a clear answer on that, Kline, but I am going to ask for your help anyway.”
“Is there something going on here that I should be worried about?”
“Probably, yes,” Travis replied, “but, again, I don’t know that I can be specific about why you should be worried.”
“Are you doing something under the radar?”
“No, not at all. This is a legitimate and authorized investigation, but there’s an aspect of it that concerns me, and that degree of concern has encouraged me to seek assistance outside the state of Kansas. Let’s just leave it at that for now.”
Kline squinted suspiciously. “That doesn’t sound so good to me, Travis. Something isn’t right here. Not right at all.”
“Well, do you want to know enough so that you become implicated, or do you want to help a fellow agent just out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Implicated in what?”
“A potential internal situation that could prove difficult to explain away.”
“Inside the Bureau?”
“Inside, perhaps outside as well. I am not sure.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Kline said.
“About what?”
“About those cases back in ’56, the Hungarians and whatever.” He smiled sardonically. “Of all the field offices in all the world, you had to walk into mine.”
“New York would have been the first office I would have contacted anyway,” Travis said, thinking of the arrest sheet he had found in the Kansas City office fire safe. “I already have information that leads me in that direction. You haven’t told me anything that I wouldn’t have discovered with one phone call.”
“So, if you’re willing to call New York and ask them questions, why do you need me?”
“Because I want to avoid having my name come up, if at all possible.”
“Okay,” Kline said, the hesitation evident in his voice. “Now I’m really not liking the sound of this. This is a transparent network, my friend. The Bureau is the Bureau. Just because I’m out in Oklahoma doesn’t give me any greater distance from this. If I’m going to be putting my hand in a hornet’s nest, I want to know why, and I want to know what the implications are.”
Travis leaned back and took a moment to breathe. He could not, and he did not wish to tell Kline anything, not only for the sake of self-preservation, but also because Kline hadn’t done anything to warrant the backlash he might experience if this went the wrong way.
“Sometimes you do something on trust,” Travis said. “It is a small thing, a seemingly inconsequential thing to you, but for someone else it’s of great significance.”
“I can do without this, Travis,” Kline interjected. “You want my help, then tell me the truth. If you are not prepared to trust me with the truth, then how can you expect me to assist you in any capacity? I am not naive, Agent Travis. I am not some greenhorn, three weeks out of Quantico looking to impress someone. You either come clean on this, or you go ask someone else to help you out.”
Travis weighed up the options that faced him. If he requested the information he wanted from New York, they would be onto him immediately, especially if the information he requested was linked to Varga. If he had Kline do it, then the alert would take a little longer, but it would still happen. Of that he was sure. If the information he requested was not connected to Varga, or—more to the point—if this was not in fact the conspiracy that Edgar Doyle had led him to believe it was, then he would still be left with a dead body, a name he was not supposed to know, and an unresolved homicide investigation.
“Okay,” Travis said. “I will tell you as much as I can.”
“And you will answer my questions when you are done, if I have any,” Kline said.
“If I can answer them, I will,” Travis replied.
“Understood. So what the hell is going on here?”
Travis briefed him as succinctly as he could, leaving out
as much as he could without making it obvious.
“So this dead guy, this Andris Varga… you are telling me that he was killed by one of our people?”
“There is that possibility, yes. One of our people, or someone within the intelligence community.”
“No evidence to suggest that’s what happened?”
“No, no evidence.”
“Just a suspicion that there’s more going on here than you’re being told?”
“Exactly.”
Kline smiled ruefully. “Well, that wouldn’t be a first, now, would it?”
Travis didn’t respond. He had displayed as much of his hand as he was prepared to at this stage, and he did not know how Kline would respond. His mouth was dry, his hands moist with sweat, and he could feel his heartbeat in his temples.
“So, if I call New York, what do you want?” Kline asked.
“I want you to call someone you know, someone who might be prepared to send us some information and delay filing the data request for a little while. I just need a head start, Agent Kline, if only for a few hours.”
“Okay, like I asked, what do you want?”
“I want you to give them the dead man’s name and get any information that is flagged as related, whether that is other names, ongoing investigations or inquiries, even closed cases… anything that can be found.”
Kline sat for a while in silence.
“And what will happen then?”
“I don’t know, Agent Kline. I won’t actually know until I get some information back. Right now I have a handful of suppositions and nothing even remotely reliable.”
“And if this is something that I hope it’s not?”
“Then you can make a decision as to whether you want to know or not. Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t know.”
“I don’t believe there is ever a situation where it is better not to know, Agent Travis.”
“Then you and I are of the same mind,” Travis replied.
Kline shifted his chair closer to the desk and reached for the telephone. “It is Sunday,” he said. “There’ll be somebody there, but there’s no way to guarantee they will help us. We may just get a brush-off until tomorrow.”
“Try,” Travis said. “That’s all I can ask of you.”
Kline dialed the number.
Travis rose from his chair and walked to the window of Kline’s office. He was caught between the need to know and the hope that he was wrong, beneath even that the knowledge that here was the pattern of his life. He had made every choice—leaving Esther, joining the army, the Bureau, never committing to anything that required an individual determination—simply because he was afraid of making a mistake. And had that not been the greatest mistake of all?
Travis turned back as Kline started talking to someone.
“Yes, Hungarian, far as I know. Hang on a moment…” Kline covered the mouthpiece. “V-A-R-G-A, right?” he asked Travis.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Kline went back to the call. He spelled the name, said that he needed anything they had, anything that was flagged as related. He then asked if there was a supervisor or a section chief in the office.
“Okay,” Kline said. “If you could get onto that right away, and just teletype everything you’ve got as soon as you find it, that would be really appreciated.”
The call ended. Kline set down the receiver.
“The angels are on your side,” he told Travis. “No supervisor, no section chief. Don’t know who that was, but he was a new kid, sounded about fifteen. Seemed happy to have something to do. If he even remembers to file a data request, no one is going to see it until tomorrow.”
“Unless there’s an alert on the file itself, and then it will just be automatically flagged,” Travis said. Such a thing was not uncommon. Back when he’d been chasing Tony Scarapetto, every single file relating to Scarapetto, William Murchison, Luke Barrett, Madeline Jarvis, and any other known associates had carried such a flag. If you filed or requested data on any one of them, there was a call within half an hour. Was there new information? Who was chasing what? Had there been a fresh sighting of Scarapetto or Barrett? Perhaps this would be the same. Maybe as soon as New York started transmitting information regarding Varga, there would be a call from Washington.
“You need to settle down,” Kline said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on in your head, Travis, but you are wound like a clock spring, my friend, and something is going to snap. Seems to me you are imagining the worst without any evidence to suggest that the worst is what you’re going to get.”
“You’re right,” Travis said. “I am going around in circles on this thing.”
“Well, I don’t much care to know what it is you’re thinking until we have something substantial to back it up. Assumption, as they say, is the mother of all fuckups.”
Travis laughed suddenly, surprising even himself. He had not heard the expression for as long as he could recall, perhaps as far back as the army. Agents did not use such expressions. It was not Bureau policy. You were polite, professional, mannered, conservative, always distant, unattached, objective. The Bureau was not a job; it was a way of life. It was not a career, it was a vocation. And it required everything of you, everything you had and everything you could give.
“Stop it,” Kline said, snapping Travis out of his reverie. “Enough, okay? Think about something else for a minute, would you? You’re gonna drive yourself crazy.”
“How old are you?” Travis asked.
“Thirty-six, thirty-seven in a couple of months. Why d’you ask?”
“You married? Got kids?”
Kline smiled, frowned a little. “No, and no.”
“You dating someone?”
“What’s with the third degree?”
“Isn’t this what people talk about, Kline, or have you forgotten as well?”
“Oh, Lord, are we having a crisis of faith, Travis?” Kline said, and there was a tone of mock concern in his voice.
“A crisis of faith? Maybe,” Travis replied.
“Been there, done that, as they say.”
“You doubt the Bureau?”
“You really want to have this conversation, Travis? Is that what you want?”
“I think we’re already having it,” Travis replied.
“You don’t think most everyone goes through this at some point? You’re not that unique, my friend.”
Kline reached for a cigarette and lit it. “You know what I think we do sometimes, Agent Travis?”
“What do you think we do, Agent Kline?”
“I think we are there to make sure that the decent, hardworking citizens of this country never see behind the curtain.”
“The curtain?”
“You’ve seen The Wizard of Oz, right?”
“No, I can’t say that I have. Heard of it, sure.”
“Oh hell, Travis, where have you been?”
“I don’t know,” Travis said. “I honestly don’t know where I’ve been. That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for the last few days. What have I been doing? Where have I been? Who am I?”
“Oh, Christ almighty, you really have got it bad, haven’t you?”
Travis waved the comment aside. “You know, these past few days I have seen things, heard things, experienced things that I didn’t even believe were possible.”
“Sounds to me like you’re having a little more than a crisis of faith, my friend,” Kline said.
The teleprinter in the back office started to chug, but Travis didn’t even seem to hear it.
“Maybe it is a crisis of faith,” Travis went on. “Maybe it’s something else entirely.” He sighed deeply. “You ever get to the point where you feel it would be best to try not thinking at all?”
“A good few times,” Kline repl
ied. “Look, this doesn’t have to be as big a deal as you’re making it. There are always going to be boundaries and limits to what we can and cannot know. That’s the way it works. That’s the way any organization works. Sometimes something happens, and you look at it out of context and it seems like the worst thing in the world, and then you get the context and it makes perfect sense. Like a disease, for example. You got a disease, and there’s a bunch of guys in white coats trying to figure out a cure for this disease, and they come up with this, that, and the other, and they try it out and it makes some people sicker. They go back to the drawing board, and they figure it out again. They get a bunch of volunteers to test this thing on, and half of them up and die. They do more tests, they try another formula, and finally they get it right. Now they have a real honest-to-God life-saving cure, and it works for everyone. Okay, so they killed ten or fifteen people on the way, but now they have something that saves hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. So are they heroes, or are they murderers? Depends on the context, see?”
“I don’t know the context of why Andris Varga was killed,” Travis said. “I don’t know why his body was put where it was, and I don’t know why I was sent down there to find out.”
“So, you’re trying to make a jigsaw piece fit, and you don’t even have a box with the picture on right now. You don’t even know what you’re looking at, my friend, and that’s the worst kind of perspective from which to form a viewpoint.”
“You’re right,” Travis said. “You’re absolutely right.”
“Of course I’m right,” Kline said, smiling. “I’m from New York.”
The pair of them got up and headed back to check on the teleprinter.
“Here we are,” Kline said, indicating merely one line on the first page. “Chrysanthemum, the name of that operation that was running out of New York.”
There was a sequence of operational code names, all of them meaningless—Sahara, Navajo, Hannibal, Paperclip, Chatter, Bluebird, and Artichoke. Beside each name was a confidentiality classification, each of them of a level prohibiting access to anyone beneath the rank of associate deputy director, just two steps beneath Director Hoover himself. There was reference to something called Venona and the Communist Party of the United States of America.
