“On the basis of that horoscope, Diem and Nhu alerted their family. The head of the family, the Truong toe, who is identified in my report, took over the planning for the revenge of the deaths of Diem and Nhu. After reading Yu Lung’s horoscopes, no one in the family doubted that the murders would occur, and soon. Nor did they doubt the broker for these murders would be the President of the United States.
“On September 12 Yu Lung drew up the second set of horoscopes. September 12 was the tenth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s marriage. You have the translations. The men horoscoped were Diem and Nhu again, President Kennedy, a North Vietnamese intelligence officer named Do Minh Kha, and Do Minh Kha’s grown-up daughter. Her name is Dao—or, in French, Nicole. In addition to a reading of zodiacal signs relating to these five persons, Yu Lung drew up an elaborate geo-mantic scheme. This showed the places, the geographical locations, where the feng shui, or the good and evil forces that act on men, would be strongest.
“Yu Lung’s readings confirmed that death was certain for Diem and Nhu. The family had already decided—through logic, not magic—that John F. Kennedy would be the murderer of their relatives. Yu Lung’s horoscope, based on the precise hour, date, and year of Kennedy’s birth and other public information —when and where he was wounded in the war, was stricken with his illness, was married, when his child died, when his older brother was killed—showed that there were patches in the lunar calendar in which Kennedy was vulnerable to violent death.
“One of these periods fell during the third week in November on the Western calendar. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday of the third week in November—the day of prime danger for him, as predicted by Yu Lung. That he was killed on that day will seem happenstance to you, but it didn’t look that way to Yu Lung or the Truong toe.
“Diem and Nhu were killed on November 1, our time. Kennedy died precisely twenty-one days later, on November 22. Diem’s personal lucky number was seven. Seven times three is twenty-one. Also, in Vietnamese funeral custom, special rites are performed for the dead every seventh day after the day of death. So there was, in the choice of November 22 as the date of the assassination, what one of my agents called ‘an elegance.’
“Now, as to the North Vietnamese intelligence officer, Do Minh Kha, and his daughter. Do is a member of one of the Ngo phais—he and Diem and Nhu were cousins of a sort. Do’s name, by the way, is a nom de révolution; he was born a Ngo. Kinship is a powerful thing in Vietnam. Do Minh Kha may have been a Communist and an enemy intelligence officer, but he was also a blood relation of Diem and Nhu. That would be, in a matter like this one, the more important loyalty.
“Yu Lung’s horoscopes, which predict the time of events, and his geomantic readings, which indicate the best place to do something, showed this about Do: that he should be approached in Vientiane, Laos, in early September. Yu Lung foresaw that the best possible messenger was his daughter, Dao. She’s called by her French name, Nicole, in my report. Dao or Nicole is the child of a woman the Truong toe wanted to marry when he was younger. The mother was killed during the migration of the Catholics out of North Vietnam after Ho Chi Minh took over in 1954. The Truong toe rescued the child and raised her as his own daughter. Therefore Do Minh Kha owed a debt to the Ngos not only out of kinship but also out of gratitude for the way in which they’d cared for his child.
“We knew that Do Minh Kha was in Laos during September. We watched him as a matter of routine; he is a very high-ranking officer and we wanted to know what he was up to. One of my agents, Vuong Van Luong, was among the U.S. assets who were sent to Vientiane to try to find out what Do Minh Kha was doing there. Luong failed to find out, and so did all our other agents. Do just stayed in a house in Vientiane for three days with a beautiful young Vietnamese woman. When nothing more than that happened, we assumed he was shacking up. Luong did manage to take photographs of the girl, coming in and out of the house with Do. The girl wasn’t in our files. We couldn’t identify her. We now know that the girl was not his mistress but his daughter. Do and Nicole met in Vientiane in September for the first time since the girl left Hanoi as a child.
“We weren’t able to wire the house in Vientiane, and it probably wouldn’t have done us much good if we had. Do is too professional to have talked, even to his daughter, in a strange house where there might be listening devices. However, Luong reported that Do and Nicole would go for walks together around the garden of the house in Vientiane. We know now what Nicole asked her father to do. And we know that he agreed.
“Nicole told her father about the family’s plan to kill President Kennedy in revenge for the deaths of Diem and Nhu. She showed him the horoscopes, probably. She asked for his help in the name of the family. They code-named the operation against Kennedy ‘the tears of autumn.’ That phrase, ‘the tears of autumn,’ can be rendered in Vietnamese as a woman’s name, Lê Thu.
“Lê Thu was the death name of Do’s wife. As you saw in the report, the Vietnamese change their names when they die. There was a kind of double poetry, and a good deal of psychology, in the choice of this code name. At first I thought it was a play on the name of Madame Nhu—she’s called Lê Xuan, which means ‘the tears of spring.’
It was autumn in America when Kennedy was assassinated on November 22. The code name had two purposes—Lê Thu because of the guilt it would evoke in Do Minh Kha, who had sent his wife away to be killed. And ‘tears of autumn’ because Kennedy was going to die in autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.
“Lê Thu was not a secure code name—it contains a clue that led me to Do Minh Kha, and through him to everything else. But the family didn’t think that security mattered, because they weren’t going to use the phrase outside the family. What mattered to them was that it gave a name to their collective hatred for Kennedy and for Americans in general.
“What the family needed from Do was precisely what gave us our chance to penetrate the operation. They needed a cutout, a go-between, who could activate Kennedy’s assassin. They couldn’t do it themselves because the assassin could not know, could not be permitted to guess, who he was working for. It was a matter of security—and, more important, a matter of motivation. An assassin being approached by the Vietnamese would know at once who was using him to kill Kennedy. They couldn’t have that. Also, they are realists—they knew that even Oswald probably wouldn’t have done it for a Vietnamese, let alone a South Vietnamese. Oswald would have believed Diem was a Nazi, and his sympathies lay elsewhere.
“So they needed a cutout who was a white man. Do Minh Kha is in charge of the section of North Vietnamese intelligence that handles liaison with other Communist intelligence services. He had debts he could call in. The family didn’t care who killed Kennedy. They didn’t think it mattered who pulled the trigger—Yu Lung had already assured them the assassination attempt would succeed.
“Kennedy’s horoscope gives not only the auspicious time for the assassination, November 22, but also the place, Dallas. Yu Lung had selected that city as the most favorable geomantic location. He drew up a long treatment of geomantic conditions in Dallas. The only limitation he put on success was that the assassin must not fire toward the north or northwest; under the principles of geomancy, these are directions to be avoided. Oswald fired almost due west from the window of the Texas School Depository. I don’t imagine he’d been instructed to do that. It was a coincidence that Kennedy’s car was traveling in a westerly direction.
“They knew Kennedy would be in Dallas on November 22. The American newspapers had reported this fact, and you can be sure that the Vietnamese, in Hanoi and in Saigon, had a complete file of clippings.
“When Do Minh Kha went back to Hanoi after seeing Nicole in Vientiane, he found Manuel Ruiz there. Ruiz was on his way to the Congo to organize a guerrilla force, and he’d come to consult with the world’s leading authorities on guerrilla warfare, the North Vietnamese. Ruiz was surprised that Do knew where he was when I tracked him down in the Congo— of course, Do didn’t know; I was lying t
o Ruiz—so he probably didn’t tell Do what his target country was.
“However, Do had to tell Ruiz what his target was—John F. Kennedy. Do wanted an assassin for one-time use. Ruiz told him about Oswald. The Cubans had contacted Oswald, on an unwitting basis, when he was in New Orleans during the summer. He’d tried to pass himself off as an expert on guerrilla tactics. The Cuban network in New Orleans informed Ruiz— that was his department. The Cubans assessed Oswald, decided he was a nut and dropped any idea of recuiting him.
“Ruiz didn’t think the Vietnamese had a chance of killing Kennedy, even though Do Minh Kha was absolutely confident the operation would succeed. Ruiz played a game with the Vietnamese. He agreed to approach Oswald and activate him as Kennedy’s assassin. You saw in the report what Ruiz thought of Oswald. But he went ahead, as a favor to Do. The irony is extraordinary: to this day, Ruiz doesn’t know that he was an agent for the Truong toe—he thinks the Kennedy assassination was a North Vietnamese operation.
“At the instigation of an agent of Ruiz’s in New Orleans, Oswald went to Mexico City, leaving New Orleans on September 25 by bus. He arrived in Mexico City at ten in the morning on September 27 and registered at the Hotel Comercio, as the Cubans had instructed him to do. That day he went twice to the Cuban embassy and once to the Soviet embassy to apply for visas. He was refused in both places. Ruiz picked him up on that day and kept him under surveillance. When Ruiz was certain that Oswald was clean—that there was no U.S. interest in him and no American surveillance, he contacted him by phone, using a coded recognition signal.
“David tells me there are three dead days in Oswald’s stay in Mexico City. The official investigation has not turned up anything on Oswald’s activities between September 27 and October 1, when Oswald left Mexico City by bus.
“Ruiz talked to Oswald on September 30, in the park called the Alameda. You have Oswald’s reaction in the report. He took Ruiz’s bait. When Oswald walked out of the Alameda, he was activated, and President Kennedy was a dead man.
“Ruiz went on to the Congo. Oswald went back to Dallas.”
Dennis Foley left his place by the window. Christopher saw through the window that two White House Cadillacs were drawn up at the curb; the chauffeurs stood smoking on the brick sidewalk. The meeting was taking more time than Foley and Trumbull had expected. Foley, at the bar, poured neat scotch into his glass. His harsh blue eyes were fastened on Christopher’s face.
“The killing of Oswald seems to have been unrelated to the Vietnamese,” Christopher said. “There was unbearable heat on the Soviets. Oswald, after all, had been a defector to the USSR. The Russian service believes in direct, drastic action. The KGB had Frankie Pigeon in cold storage. They used Pigeon, and Pigeon used Ruby, to take the heat off. Pigeon earned a million dollars with one phone call.
“Ruby was a kind of fringe figure, more a hustler than a hoodlum, according to Pigeon. He’d always wanted to be on the inside with the syndicate, if that’s what it’s called in real life. Pigeon just told him to make a hit for the syndicate, and Ruby jumped at the chance. Pigeon says Ruby used to hang around the edge of the mob in Chicago and was always trying to keep in touch after he moved to Dallas. The syndicate never wanted any part of him. And it still knows nothing about the way Pigeon used Ruby to kill Oswald. Pigeon’s terrified that they’ll find out. They’d kill him. He broke discipline. He did it on his own, for the money.
“Frankie Pigeon scoffs at Ruby now for being a romantic about Kennedy, but I think Pigeon regarded killing Oswald as a patriotic act, just as much as Ruby did. Pigeon had no fear that Ruby would talk: he’d want to prove to the syndicate that he could observe omertà. as well as any Sicilian. Once Oswald was dead, everything calmed down for the Soviets in twenty-four hours—literally. From their point of view, it was a sensible operation, and cheap at the price.”
3
Trumbull sighed. “I swear I never heard anything like that,” he said. “Men killing Presidents of the United States, and other men killing the assassin, and nobody knowing who they were working for or why. That part doesn’t make sense at all.”
“It makes every kind of sense,” Patchen said. “That’s the way it’s done. I can show you files on a dozen other cases. The pattern is classic. In other circumstances I’d say it was admirable.” He turned to Christopher .“One thing about the operation against Oswald. Are you sure about the counterfeit money?”
“Yes,” Christopher said. “That’s what the bank records show. Klimenko carried ten thousand hundred-dollar bills to Zurich. Fifty of the bills were counterfeit. They have the serial numbers of the money manufactured by the SS during the war. The KGB just passed the fake money on to Pigeon. Dolder und Co. caught it right away. Of course they informed the Swiss police. I don’t understand it. Maybe the Russians didn’t check all the serial numbers; maybe they just gathered up all the hundred-dollar bills lying around in their safes. You know how sloppy things can get on an emergency operation. They had no reason to plant the counterfeits on Pigeon, unless they’ve got some idea of blackmailing him with the syndicate. That’s too complicated, even for them.”
Foley returned to his chair with a fresh drink in his hand. Liquor and anger had colored his face. He sat down beside Trumbull and stared for a moment into the empty air. When he began to speak, he used the abrupt sentences Christopher remembered from their first meeting in Paris.
“J.D. asked you to tell us about your methods, but I didn’t hear any mention of those,” he said. “Suppose you tell us how you came by all this data.”
“By spending money, mostly,” Christopher said.
“Oh. You mean you’ve been zipping around the world like Sam Spade, bribing hotel clerks?”
“I paused to bury one of my agents, Foley.”
Foley bent his long torso, leaning across the coffee table so that his face was close to Christopher’s.
“Let me recapitulate,” he said. “One of your agents, this Luong, was killed in Saigon. What was the death toll from the bomb in the car—five, six? Then you killed the two Vietnamese kids you call assassins. In Zurich you broke into a bank, using an unreconstructed Nazi as a burglar. In Italy you caused two American citizens to be shot, though not, by your account, killed. You kidnapped and tortured another American citizen. You left four Cubans dead and another wounded in the Congo. For a moralizer, you’re quite a fellow.”
Foley opened the file containing Christopher’s report and spilled the photographs over the table. He arranged the pictures of the dead Vietnamese gunmen and those showing Frankie Pigeon, bound and naked, in the interrogation room.
“You expect us to put value on information obtained by these methods?” he asked. “You expect us to believe in someone named Manuel Ruiz, hidden in the jungle, and to believe he’d simply tell you what you say he’s told you?”
Foley, as he finished speaking, became aware of Patchen, who did not so much move as change the tension of his muscles.
“Paul, don’t answer,” Patchen said. “Foley, let me say this to you: first of all, Christopher didn’t kill his own agent; he has a reputation amounting to an office joke for keeping agents alive. Second, he didn’t put two pounds of plastique in his own car. Third, he didn’t expect to cause the deaths of those two Vietnamese gunmen. He wanted to talk to them, for reasons I think you understand very clearly—reasons he was honorable enough not to spell out in a report that may yet go to the President. I have no such scruples.”
“David, I’m not talking to you,” Foley said.
“Oh yes you are,” Patchen said. There was no more resonance than usual in his flat voice, but Trumbull threw Foley a glance and held up his palm. “Go on, David,” he said.
“Christopher’s methods are justified by their results,” Patchen said. “That’s the rule. That’s always been the rule. Christopher’s been given promotions and medals by his government for playing by that rule better than almost anyone else has ever done. You haven’t lived his life. You can’t imagine it
, much less understand it.”
“All right, David,” Trumbull said.
Patchen slowed his speech, but went on. “There’s a tape recording of the conversation with Manuel Ruiz, and a living witness to Christopher’s presence in the Congo,” he said. “Christopher left Ruiz alive, and Pigeon too, when it would have been easy to let them be killed. We can lay hands on both of them whenever we’re instructed to do so. Pigeon still has the counterfeit money, and the Swiss police know the serial numbers. We know the movements of Manuel Ruiz, and of Do and his daughter. The evidence is incontrovertible. Christopher has given you the truth. You don’t like it, Foley. You never have. You think he has some motive to soil Kennedy’s memory. The question is, will you ever learn?”
Rolling his glass between his palms, Trumbull nodded slowly, as if agreeing with whatever thought was passing through his own head.
“Well,” Trumbull said. “What we seem to have here is a pretty good case against all the people Paul has put the finger on. We’ve got two men who believe it in this room—am I right, David? You buy what Paul’s told us?”
“There’s no choice,” Patchen said. “It’s not just this reporting. There’s collateral intelligence in our hands that confirms almost everything he’s told us. With a little more work we can remove every shadow of a doubt. Every shadow.”
“Okay,” Trumbull said. “That’s you and Paul. I respect your judgment, David, and your work, Paul. Then there’s Dennis, here—I take it he doesn’t believe it, and he won’t believe it.”
Foley said, “That is correct.”
“Then there’s me,” Trumbull said. “I guess I make the decision. Do we trot this in to the President? He’s the man. The rest of us are just his lookouts.”
Trumbull collected the scattered pages and photographs and put them back in order.
“If I show this to the President, what’ll he do?” he asked. “He can go on TV and hand the American people another brutal, horrible shock, or he can read it and keep it secret and worry about it for the rest of his Presidency. The country has got to come together after this tragedy down in Dallas. Got to. We’ve got something to do in Vietnam, and we’ve got to do it. We can’t do it without public understanding and support for our policy. Wouldn’t you agree, Dennis—David?”
The Tears of Autumn Page 27
