At, of course, first sight.
Despite what he had been told in the service by a wise sergeant, he proceeded to make precisely the same mistake as had before, of course expecting totally different results now.
“Marina, will you ...?
“Give me time, Lee. Please? A week ...”
“I’ll wait forever if need be, darling.”
Already under orders to say yes, having been instructed to manipulate Lee into asking, Marina insisted on time to think so that Lee, no fool, would not begin to wonder if she accepted too quickly to be believed. The character called Marina had to be consistent and that girl would not jump so fast. She would hesitate, and in so doing make her manipulations appear invisible.
“Lee? Where have you been? Yes, of course, I’ll marry you.”
Seemingly, Lee proposed to Marina from his hospital bed. That in actually had been Lee’s twin, the real Lee off in Cuba, trying to kill Castro to facilitate the Bay of Pigs invasion by making it difficult for Cubans to respond without their leader.
Lee’s mission and the greater scheme had failed miserably. In proposing, the twin had been following orders from George, who withheld this from Lee while Lee recuperated in Miami. Lee’s surprise, upon confronting Marina after a return to Minsk, must ring entirely, precisely true.
George knew that women, with their remarkable sixth sense, can detect an act, particularly on the part of a man in their lives, immediately. This held true even if that woman is herself offering a performance. Anyway, Lee’s response had to be real.
“Oh. That! Why, that’s wonderful, Marina. Wonderful!”
Reports trickling in from agents in Moscow and Minsk did point to the possibility that Marina was actually working for the KGB. And that, unlike Ella, she had been assigned to marry Lee. He could not be told this, at least not yet, for fear that Lee would become suspicious of her every move. And she, being a perceptive woman, would spot this in his eyes and manner.
This, George could not allow; it would interfere with his learning what he and the CIA must know, what they could discern from observing her attempts to collect information. Also, the Company had grown concerned about a group of Russians living in the Dallas area, serendipitously near Fort Worth, where Robert lived. This allowed Lee a logical reason to settle there.
These were American citizens of Russian descent who claimed aristocratic blood dating back to the czar. Their forefathers fled the Russian Revolution of 1919 even as so many Cubans now settling in Miami had run away from Castro and his own communist takeover forty years later. All claimed to be proud of their Russian heritage but pro-democracy and fervently anti-communist.
The CIA wasn’t so certain. As several recent circumstances suggested, they might be employing their status as a welcome minority as a “legend” of their own making, reporting back to the KGB. One way or the other, the CIA had to know.
What better means to learn than have Ozzie bring home a wife who might be working for the KGB? If Marina were such a plant, and if the Dallas/Fort Worth Russians were something other than what they claimed to be, they would contact a recent arrival under the auspices of helping a fellow country-person feel at home, deep in the heart of Texas. While, without her husband realizing it, put his bride to work within their cell.
On the other hand, if Lee turned out not to be such a fool but a CIA agent, so much the better. Marina could employ her feminine wiles to draw from her fool of a husband all sorts of information he believed spoken in a special sort of confidence.
*
“I am returning to America. Will you go with me?”
“Oh, yes,” Marina exclaimed, slipping into a seemingly spontaneous dance of joy. “Anywhere, Lee, in the world!”
“Now, I know you are filled with childish dreams about streets paved with gold. This is not the way things are.”
“Those are only stories. Still, I know that life will be better for me there than it is, or ever can be, here.”
Lee took Marina in his arms and kissed her. “I will do all I can to make our lives wonderful once we arrive. I promise.”
“I know that, Lee. Oh, but I can’t wait. Just think! Me, little Marina: In the wonderful world that is the U.S.A.”
When Richard Snyder in Moscow received word from Lee that he not only wanted to return home but bring a Soviet bride with him, the official Consul and secretive CIA agent made certain the process went as smoothly as possible from his end. The KGB, eager to have Marina overseas, contacted the passport office to speed things along.
The only possible problems might be the FBI. There, so far as anyone knew, Lee was indeed a traitor, perhaps coming home to spy on the U.S. for the Russians. Hoover ordered his agents to question Oswald on return, the CIA still insistent that the FBI must not be allowed to know what the Company was actually up to. Not only with Lee, but as to any of their secret operatives.
Previous to the Oswalds’ arrival, the FBI set up a special file to monitor their travels: 327-925D. Agent John Fain was sent from D.C. to the Fort Worth office to study Lee’s every move, then report back to J. Edgar. This necessitated that the CIA create a counter-network to throw Fain off course.
For Hoover to learn Lee was a government agent, working for “the other side” of information security, without his own branch having been alerted to this for fear that the fewer people in on a secret the better, would likely cause a blow-up. Which could further complicate the duel of wits being waged between the Bureau in D.C. and the Company not far away in Langley VA. The situation had already grown tense enough without that.
So even as Fain attempted to learn more about what was going on in northern Texas, interviewing Lee’s relatives, various CIA operatives were dispatched to keep knowledge about Lee’s actual status, which Marguerite and Robert knew nothing about, from surfacing. Fain’s interviews with them were, then, superfluous. On the other hand, once the couple arrived, the Company had to continually watch over Lee and Marina, in order to maintain the secretive status of his “legend.” And hers!
Meanwhile, Lee flew from Minsk to Moscow on July 8, 1961, checking in at Hotel Berlin, visiting Snyder in a considerably less irritated mood than Lee had been in, or performed, on their previous meeting. Several days later, Marina joined Lee and was interviewed by Snyder’s co-worker John McVickar, who found her a pleasant young woman. McVickar stamped her papers as “acceptable without suspicions or hesitation.”
Pregnant, Marina announced that while the process took its course, she would fly to Kharkov to bid farewell to an old aunt. In actuality, the woman calling herself ‘Marina’ met with KGB officials, planning out her long-term approach in America.
This left Lee to spend his 22nd birthday alone, less than pleased at this status. After all, the previous year he had two beautiful Russians with him. That now seemed a lifetime ago. Lee wondered about contacting Rima and Rosa but guessed that, like himself, they had gone through considerable life changes during the intervening months. Those women would be totally different people now, with little if anything to say to a man who had briefly figured prominently in their own lives.
So Lee lay in bed, naked, dreaming of Marina, and the child that soon would add so much to their now intertwined lives.
Also, trying, as always, to grasp who Lee Oswald really was. This was a question that would consume this man throughout his brief existence.
As I study, relentlessly study, and learn new words, or discover the true meaning of words I thought I knew, I come to the conclusion that I am either a stoic or a narcissist.
So ardently do I wish to see myself as a stoic, in the old Roman sense: Refusing to show any emotions, however deeply I may experience them. Even moreso, perhaps, than ‘normals.’
Always, though, putting on a false front to conceal my pain when insulted or rejected, so often the case in my life.
Am I better off now? I believed myself to have come so far, achieved so much, transformed completely.
Yet here I am, alone my birt
hday. As alienated and isolated as I felt when, as a lost little boy ...
Also, I fear myself to be narcissist: Unable to love, truly love, anyone or anything other than myself. Is it possible that I might be both? Like a schizophrenic, which I sometimes fear I may be, roaring from one extreme to the other.
Both elements inside me, waging a constant war with one another, for my mind, my soul. If such a thing even exists.
*
Back home, when a blithe J. Edgar Hoover suggested to the State Department that it might not be in America’s best interest to have Lee back, Robert I. Owens in the Soviet Affairs section, he very much in the know thanks to constant contact with Allan Dulles, filed a report stating: “it is in the interest of the United States to get Lee Harvey Oswald and his family out of the Soviet Union and into the United States as soon as possible.”
To Hoover’s disbelief and anger, the other agencies set his deep concerns aside, doing all they could to pave the way for Lee and his bride, Marina now seven months pregnant, to come to America. On February 15, 1962, she gave birth to a daughter whom they named June. This occurred while waiting for her exit visa which, inexplicably to Lee, took much longer to process than had been expected. The Russian government had decided to purposefully create a delay so that the child would be born there. They were planning ahead: should it ever be necessary for Marina to make a hurried return home, the baby, born a Soviet citizen, would not create a problem that might delay their hasty exit from the U.S.
“Oh, Lee,” Marina wept, these of course crocodile tears, she fully aware of the reasons for a slow-down in the process. “What if we are not allowed to leave? What will we do?”
“They can’t stop us. I won’t let them.” How strong he felt when speaking so to Marina, the stoic side of him dominant now. Lee projected a false sense of total security. The narcissist in him too loved to believe this little lie about his own powers to change fate, determine the outcome, and win in the end. Lee had continued reading Nietzsche. A seminal line, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” leapt up at him from the page.
It all makes sense now. My disastrous childhood? Necessary to make me the powerful man I am today. Thank you, then, God, for putting me through all the torture I cursed you for, over so many years. Not random and unfair, as I once falsely assumed.
All part of your great master plan. Assuming, of course, that there is a higher being, which I doubt. But do not dismiss.
Who am I? Someday, when I come to know for certain if you are there or not, then I will also know who I am.
*
Husband, wife and child soon traveled through Poland, East Germany, West Germany and the Netherlands. One night they were obliged to share a dinner table with an American couple. When during a pleasant conversation the husband inquired as to what Lee did for a living, the response, accompanied by a sardonic grin, was: “I might just be a spy!” All laughed loudly.
Then followed a joyous four-day vacation in Amsterdam. Arm in arm, the happy couple and their adorable child wandered the quaint streets, enjoyed sausage-rolls on the docks, giggled at brazen prostitutes behind red glass windows, and visited the Van Gogh museum. Lee experienced one of his great epiphanies there, staring at the famed self-portrait of a misunderstood man, his sad, bitter eyes gazing out at the onlooker as the world around him, as he portrayed it, reflected the artist’s tortured psyche.
The brain beneath that anguished face had to be wondering if he were the genius his heart and soul insisted or the non-talent fool everyone in his world apparently believed him to be.
Such anguish! He paints the way I feel ... I am not alone ... others have walked this path ... and, in the end, many reigned supreme, if only after passing through hell on earth . .
The Oswalds took the Moscow-Berlin express to Rotterdam, boarding SS Maasdam, sailing for America June 4. Lee delighted at what he considered an appealing circumstance or one more bit of evidence his life did follow some preordained pattern, the ever-twisting trail inextricably linked to that of his favorite singer/star, Frank Sinatra: The boat would dock at Hoboken, New Jersey, the scene of Sinatra’s humble birth and childhood.
Lee couldn’t wait to see the town for himself, albeit briefly, hoping to track down the building where The Voice had been raised. Like the Italian kid from a northern Sicilian ghetto in the U.S., this Southern boy from an urban slum had crawled up and out. Sinatra was blessed with that remarkable tool, his talent. Lee’s attributes? Considerably less obvious.
Still, he’d never forgotten something Sinatra once said in an interview when the TV host asked him to explain how he had defied the odds and hit the big-time: “I refused to fail!”
Lee had accepted that as his mantra. If it was good enough for Francis Albert Sinatra, then it would be good enough for Lee Harvey Oswald. At any rate, he was home.
However bad his experiences here may have been, Lee was an American, true blue to the core. Why his patriotism remained so strong and firm, Lee could not yet put into precise words.
What was the line from that movie ... ? Oh, of course: Just because you love something doesn’t mean it has to love you back. Monty Clift, From Here to Eternity, 1953 ...
There was another movie, a modern western called Home From the Hill, made just two years ago, starring Robert Mitchum. It had been set in Texas, Lee even now on his way back there. The title derived from a poem Lee read while in that seventh grade English class, with that teacher who made all the difference.
A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. How did it go?
Home is the sailor, home from the sea, The hunter, home from the hill ...
That’s might be me the poet wrote of, long before I was born. I am the sailor, here on this ship’s deck, gazing at the Statue of Liberty, my beautiful bride and wonderful child beside me. Sea-spray splashes up on us, circling gulls squawk, people cheer at the site New York harbor. I am the hunter, as I have stalked my prey, righteously killed my enemy.
No one can now doubt my manhood. His blood flowed through my fingers; I delighted in watching him suffer. I have killed and, if necessary, for my good or my country, will kill again.
I know now that this is what I, Lee Oswald, was born for.
I was blessed, or cursed, with a talent for killing.
“Darling? You look so intense. Is anything wrong?”
“No, Marina. Actually, things have never been so right.”
*
Marina’s disillusionment with what was supposed to be her own American Dream-come-true began ten days before reaching the U.S. On George’s suggestion, Lee had booked them into a Third Class cabin aboard the Maasdam, hopefully not attracting any unwanted attention: i.e., where did these supposedly simple folk get the money for a luxurious passage? The FBI would ask such questions upon their disembarking, blowing his cover.
Though the guise worked, a toll was taken as to Marina: she despised the cramped quarters, the inedibly bad food, the sense of having been reduced from a Beautiful Person a short while earlier to a virtual pauper, when this great sea-change that she had agreed to brought her down, not up, socially.
“I do not mind the bareness of it all. But this is dirty.”
“Stay strong. In a week we will be home. This will end.”
Aboard the ship, a Russian-speaking waiter named Pieter Didenko delighted Marina with his conversations about the Old Country. Delicately, he let her know that he would be her KGB contact while sailing. Any messages which needed to be conveyed to the KGB could be passed through his resources.
Also, wherever in the U.S. the couple settled, she would be contacted. A network of Russian agents would quietly follow the Oswalds’ every move. She hinted that Lee had said something to her about wanting to join his family in the Fort Worth area.
“Fabulous. Our most reliable people live near there.”
After disembarking, Lee was singled out from the other passengers and interrogated at length by Spas T. Raikin. He claimed to be a Russian speaking casework
er with Travelers Aid in New York City. From the barrage of pointed questions, Lee guessed Raikin to be an FBI plant or an operative for the Bureau assigned to learn as much as possible as to what was going on inside his mind. Lee stuck to the legend he had concocted and which George heartily approved of. This left Raikin confused as to how Lee Oswald ought to be summed up: More socialist than communist and, from what he said, more pro-American than ever following his discouraging experiences in the Soviet Union.
“Will being back in America make you happy?”
“Happiness,” Lee responded, “can exist only in taking part in a struggle to achieve a state in which there is no borderline between one’s personal world and the world in general.”
What in the name of God is this guy even talking about? Is Lee Harvey Oswald an innocent, a Soviet agent, or a philosopher?
Following a one night stay at the Times Square Hotel, where Marina expressed some delight in the bright neon lights below and constant rush and flow of people, everyone in some great hurry to be somewhere other than where they currently were, Lee, Marina, and June flew from New York International Airport on Delta Flight 821 to Dallas’ Love Field.
There they were greeted by Robert Oswald and his wife Vada. “Welcome home, little brother. Keep your nose clean?”
“Of course. I brought one of your handkerchiefs along.”
During the ninety minute car trip back to Fort Worth, where husband, wife and daughter would temporarily stay with the warm couple, Robert and Vada attempted to strike up a friendly conversation with their new family member. They were surprised to learn Marina spoke not a word of English. She would merely smile sweetly in response to everything they said, nodding her head in a manner that suggested she had not a clue what they were talking about but desperately hoped to be liked, accepted.
“She’s very beautiful, Lee.”
“Thank you, Vada. Does she remind you of Brigitte Bardot?”
“A little, perhaps.”
“I think so. Very much. I always dreamed of being married to a movie star. Or someone who looks like one.”
Patsy! : The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald Page 32
