by R.J. Ellory
“I don’t understand this at all,” Kline said. “This is all kind of meaning—”
The phone rang, interrupting his comment. He was gone for no more than a minute, and when he returned, the teleprinter had stopped.
“That was New York,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re going to like this or not. The agent I spoke to, Hendry, says that the first page is simply a list of all the file headings where the name Varga is referenced. There’s no guarantee that it’s the same Varga as your dead guy, but that’s what he’s got. The second and third pages are simply a list of all the cases that fall under those headings. That is a lot of files, hundreds he says, and they are all classified at the uppermost level. He can’t give us any more than what you have in your hand right now.”
“Which is nothing more than a shopping list of things we can’t buy, right?”
“Right.”
Travis looked over the second and third pages. There were streams of names—Rudolf Abel, Sidney Gottlieb, Donald Ewen Cameron, and then an entire paragraph devoted to Operation Pastorius. Travis knew of Pastorius, and the US Supreme Court Ex parte Quirin case that upheld the verdict of a military tribunal from the early 1940s. Pastorius had been a German plan for internal sabotage of strategic US economic targets such as hydroelectric plants, railroad repair shops, Hell Gate Bridge in New York and Penn Station, New Jersey. Eight Germans had been involved, two of them US citizens, all of them having previously lived on the US mainland. The eight had been rapidly trained, were given close to two hundred thousand dollars, and then sent from France to the East Coast of the United States in two U-boats. The anticipated two-year campaign of sabotage didn’t even begin, and the case itself was almost legendary in Bureau history, not only for its bizarre nature, but also because of the way in which the leader of the sabotage team, George John Dasch, had volunteered his own surrender to US authorities. After landing at Amagansett, New York, Dasch and three other members of the team—Ernst Burger, Richard Quirin, and Heinrich Heinck—took a train into New York City. Dasch lost his nerve immediately and traveled on to Washington, where he turned himself in to the FBI office. He was believed to be crazy until he put eighty-four thousand dollars on an assistant director’s desk. He was then interrogated for several hours, and over the subsequent two weeks, Burger and the other six Germans were picked up. Roosevelt ordered a military trial. All eight were found guilty and sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted in the case of Dasch and Burger due to the fact that they had cooperated with the tribunal. The other six confederates had been executed in August of 1942.
Beneath this, almost as an aside, was a small reference to both Frank Olson and Harold Blauer. It was that line that prompted a noticeable physical reaction in Travis. He shuddered and looked up from the pages he was studying.
“So?” Kline asked.
Disguising his reaction as best he could, Travis said, “So, as you say, not a great deal to go on. Names of operations that I am not familiar with and lists of files that we can’t access.”
“Matters of national security, right?”
“Seems that way.”
“Some things are not for the common man, my friend. Our minds are weak, and if we knew what was really going on, then our brains would burst with the pressure.”
“You think it’s funny?” Travis asked.
“I think that sometimes things get so serious that you have to force yourself to laugh about them. Otherwise you lose your sanity.”
“I can’t laugh about it,” Travis said. “I can’t even try to laugh about it. The more I see, the more I realize that I see nothing at all. It almost seems calculated, the degree to which I am unable to follow any line of investigation.”
“And there is the seed of paranoia,” Kline said. “Keep on thinking that, and they’ll have you in Bellevue before you know it.”
Travis thought of Blauer, the injections he’d been given, the threat of committal to that very same hospital hanging over his head.
“Maybe that’d be the best place for me, the way I feel right now,” he said sardonically.
“And there’s your sense of humor, Agent Travis. A little dark, very cynical, but still alive. However, that isn’t even funny. Don’t even joke about winding up in Bellevue.”
“You ever hear of Frank Olson or Harold Blauer?” Travis asked.
Kline thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t say I have. Why?”
“Just another couple of names I’ve come across among all of this.”
“Our people?”
“No, not ours. It doesn’t matter. Unrelated.”
Kline got up from the desk. “So where to now?” he asked. “Where do you go from here?”
“I have more questions now than when I arrived,” Travis said. “I need to know what these projects are.” He indicated the cover sheet on the desk. “I mean, what the hell are Bluebird, Mongoose, and MK Ultra?”
“Ours is not to question why, right?”
“That may be the viewpoint at the top, but I can’t just walk away now. I have come too far to just let it go.”
“Well,” Kline said matter-of-factly, “that’s where you and I differ, my friend, because I can let it go, and I am going to do just that.”
“Even if there is something going on here that actually contradicts the reason for being in the Bureau in the first place?”
Kline laughed, but the sound was forced and shallow. “Especially if there is something going on that contradicts my reason for being in the Bureau.”
“I don’t understand that, Kline. I really don’t understand that at all.”
“It’s the greater good, Travis. You understand the principle of the greater good. That’s precisely and exactly what we are doing. Because you’d go crazy trying to figure out the possible ramifications of what was really behind everything. There are some things that we will never understand. Of that I am sure. There are some things that we are not even capable of comprehending. There are better men than us, Travis. Smarter, more effective, more competent, and they have shouldered a responsibility that would crush us in an instant. You want to make decisions for a city, a nation, the entire population as a whole? Well, you go right ahead. That is not the game I am playing, and that is not a game I believe I ever want to play.”
“You’re going to turn a blind eye to this? Really?”
“Really.”
“And if they come down here asking after me, what then?”
“They won’t, I’m sure. If they do, what can I say? You were here. You asked for some help. I made a call to New York, I printed out a couple of pages for you, and off you went.”
Travis picked up the sheets of paper, folded them in half, in half again, and tucked them into his jacket pocket. He got up and walked to the door. “All I can ask of you is that you say nothing until you are asked. Can you do that much for me?”
“Sure I can. I don’t even know why you wanted that information, and I didn’t look at it. You are a senior special agent in the field, working on an authorized and legitimate homicide investigation. For some reason, you wound up here, needed some help. It is within my official remit to extend interoffice courtesies. After all, we are a federal network, are we not?”
Travis looked at Kline for a moment. The man’s expression said everything that needed to be said. He saw the line, and he chose to step back from it. It was more comfortable that way. It short-circuited the anxiety before it started eating you up from inside.
“When did you stop asking the important questions?” Travis asked.
“And what would they be, Agent Travis?”
“Who am I? What am I doing here? Where am I going? What is my reason for being?”
“How do you know that I ever asked myself those questions? Seems to me that if you know that there’ll never be a satisfactory answer, then why bother your
self with the question?”
“Because… because…”
“Because what, Agent Travis?”
Travis knew there was no point. Kline was not going to be an ally. “It doesn’t matter,” Travis said. “Just forget it.”
Kline smiled. “I already have, my friend. I already have.”
Travis thanked Kline. He did not shake the man’s hand. He left the Oklahoma City office and he walked down the street to his car.
42
By the time Travis arrived back in Seneca Falls, it was close to six. The run back had been slower. He had stopped twice, once at a roadside diner to get coffee, the second time for gas. He was tired, no question, but it was not merely a deep-seated physical fatigue that he was experiencing, but something far beyond that. It was psychological, emotional perhaps. It was as if he had been excommunicated from his body, had the hell beaten out of him, and then he’d just been put back in his body and left at the side of the road. There were no bruises, no broken bones, nothing visible, but he felt as if he had been though a hurricane and somehow survived.
He returned to the McCaffrey Hotel and found Laura there in the foyer. Just seeing her, Travis experienced a collision of seemingly contrary emotions.
“Agent Travis,” she said warmly. “I wondered whether you would be back today.”
“No Danny?” Travis asked.
“Oh, Danny has a hot date. One of those rare occasions when he actually makes it out of here. There’s a girl in El Dorado, and she just might be the one.”
Travis smiled, started laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Sorry, it’s just that it sounded like a line from a song. There’s a girl in El Dorado and she just might be the one.”
“You’ve had a long day,” she said.
“Yes. I’m beat.”
“You want some dinner?”
“I don’t know that I have the energy to eat dinner.”
“I have some steaks in back. I could fry you a steak.”
“No, please don’t go to any trouble for me,” Travis said.
She smiled that endearing smile. “You just don’t learn, do you?”
Travis didn’t know what to say.
“You’re not often lost for words, are you, Agent Travis?”
“Not often, no.”
“I don’t mean to make you feel awkward, but you are a guest in our hotel, and meals are part of the service, and if the cook were here, or even Danny, then I am sure that neither of them would have a problem with making you some dinner. As far as I can tell, you’ve existed on little but sandwiches since you arrived. A man has to eat, doesn’t he?”
“Did you have dinner, Laura?”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I tend to skip dinner a couple of times a week. I am trying to stay slim.”
“Well, I don’t think you need to worry about staying slim, Laura”
Laura looked at him askance. “Are you flirting with me, Agent Travis?”
Travis said nothing. He was feeling something different from abject dismay and confusion and was savoring it.
“Well?” Laura prompted.
“I find myself a little unsteady on my feet in such a situation, if you know what I mean.”
Laura leaned forward against the desk. “And what kind of situation might that be, Secret Agent Travis?”
He laughed, shook his head. “I don’t know, Laura… just dealing with people on an informal basis, just as acquaintances, friends perhaps.”
“Are we acquaintances, Agent Travis?”
“I would say we were.”
“And could we even be friends?”
Travis looked at her. There was no doubt in his mind now. She was trying to coax him out of himself. She was trying to wrong-step him enough so his defenses would crack. Was he that obvious? Was he just wearing a facade that everyone could see through like glass? And didn’t he now want those defenses to crack? Didn’t he want to just unwind and unravel? Wouldn’t he give anything just to be himself for the first time since… since Esther?
He felt something rising in his chest, like a plume of slow-motion water, just filling him up from inside, flooding through him, and there was a sense of electricity through his veins, his nerves, through every muscle, through every inch of his physical being.
He felt his cheeks color, and he glanced down at the floor.
“Have I upset you?” Laura asked.
“N-no, Laura, not at all. I’m sorry. It has been a very long day and I am tired, and I really don’t think I have the energy to even eat dinner, though I really do appreciate your offer.”
“Maybe a cup of hot tea, then?” she asked.
“Y-yes, of course. That would be good,” Travis said, unable to refuse her. He wanted to be there. He wanted to be near her. As he watched her step from behind the desk, he felt a compelling urge to put his hand on her shoulder, to tell her…
She glanced back. “Come on, then. I’ll make tea, but I’ll not wait on you.”
Travis followed her out back to the kitchen. He took a seat at the small table near the sink.
“So, the hotel,” he said eventually. “What’s the deal with the hotel? You and your brother seem very young to own and run a hotel.”
“Well,” she said, “it belongs to all three of us—myself, Danny, and Lester. Our parents bought it back in the thirties, made a real success of it, and then my father went to war and didn’t come back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“My ma… well, it just broke her heart, you know? Understandably, of course. They’d been childhood sweethearts, married in their teens, and then he’s just gone. In 1947 she went out to stay with her sister in Fort Scott, and she wasn’t there a month before we heard she’d passed. We had absolutely no warning at all. She just went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up.”
“Died of a broken heart,” Travis said.
“That’s the only explanation I have,” Laura said. “Like what Chester Greene said about those Native Americans Indians, you know? They can just decide to die, and then they’re dead.”
The water had boiled, and Laura busied herself with making tea. She brought cups and milk to the table and then sat facing Travis.
“Why aren’t you married, Laura?” Travis asked.
She smiled wistfully. “Because I am a firm believer in one marriage for life, Michael, and I have yet to meet a man with whom I would be prepared to spend the rest of my life.” She poured the tea. “And now I am asking the same question of you.”
“The job,” Travis said. “It takes over everything, really. I don’t think I really grasped the extent to which I was the job until I came here.”
“I must say that it does seem very strict, very formal, you know? I can’t imagine you going to the drive-in or to a dance or something. I think it must take a very particular kind of person to do that, to give up all the usual things, to make that degree of sacrifice. I find it very noble.”
“Really?”
“Yes, of course. I mean, my brother is a cop, and he has a wife and kids and he does barbecues and he drinks a beer every once in a while. I love him dearly, but he’s still my brother and that gives me the right to make fun of him. When he’s a cop he’s a cop, but at the end of his shift, when he goes home and takes his uniform off, well, he’s just my brother again, you know? He’s someone’s husband, someone’s dad, and my brother. But with you…” She looked up at Travis, almost as if she was now concerned that she would say something improper.
Travis smiled, put her at ease. “Go on,” he said. “I am armed, but I am unlikely to shoot you.”
She laughed. “Well, you seem so serious. And I mean pretty much always. It must be an awful strain to be that serious and intense every hour of every day. Have you always been like that, or is tha
t what’s expected of you?” She blushed then, looked away.
“What?” Travis asked. “What is it?”
“No,” she said. “I can’t possibly tell you.”
“It’s okay. Really, I won’t be upset. I promise.”
She laughed again, looked too embarrassed for words. “It’s terrible,” she said. “It’s just the most awful thing, really.”
Now Travis had to know. “Laura, please. Tell me what it is.”
“It’s just something someone said. Jack Farley, you know? He said something and it was very funny, but it was also kind of awful.”
“Tell me what Jack Farley said.”
“I can’t,” Laura replied. “Really, I can’t.”
“Well, that’s that then,” Travis said. “I’m going to have to arrest you for withholding evidence, obstruction of justice, probably a few other things. I might have to handcuff you.”
“You promise you won’t tell him that I told you?”
Travis merely raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, Lord, this is too bad. He said… well, he said that you were so stiff you probably put your shirt on before you ironed it. He said that anytime the Feds needed to bash a door down, all they had to do was pick you and bash your head against it.”
“He said that, did he?”
“He did, and I feel just awful now, Michael. I really shouldn’t have said that, but I just thought of it and I couldn’t help laughing.”
“Well, that I understand, because I keep thinking about what Danny told me about you, and it was just too funny for words, but I could never bring myself to repeat it.”
Laura stopped laughing. “What? What did he say? Oh man, I’m gonna knock him black-and-blue if he said something bad about me.”
“I can’t say a word. I promised. I made an oath.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I told you what Jack Farley said.”
“Sure you did, but did you make an oath not to repeat it? I don’t think you did. Anyway, I work for the federal government, and we have to sign stuff that says if we make an oath we keep it until death.”
