The Willard

by LeAnne Burnett Morse

  Everything else he had told Tom about the founding of Back Channel was true. The organization Tom had infiltrated two years before would have been an invisible wall to anyone looking. Had it not been for his chance introduction to “Volkov” (in correspondence only, never in person) he would never have gotten into the pipeline. Volkov allowed it because he thought Tom could prove to be a useful resource at some future time. That time had come when the perfect storm presented itself. First, Castro made himself the number one target of the American government with his dedication to communism right in the backyard of democracy. Next, Khrushchev put his “secret” missiles in Cuba where they were discovered by the Americans. Finally, Tom had made the phone call on behalf of the American government to access Back Channel in an effort to avoid war. Though none of these things were set in motion by Back Channel, they worked perfectly to set up a scenario the group needed to make their final move, the one that had been in the works for more than forty years.

  “You were going to burn it all down,” Tom said.

  “No, Thomas. They were going to burn it all down. When I left Moscow in 1920 we believed it was a matter of four or five years until we’d be able to get the bloody Bolsheviks out of power. I came here not to hide, but to give the organization a place from which we could rebuild a shadow government without interference from the secret police. First we had the iron-fisted Lenin, then when the puppet Rykov took power it looked like the perfect opportunity for retaking the government. We put the wheels in motion, but before we could act Stalin assumed leadership and our plans fell apart. We regrouped and waited for a new opportunity to present itself, which happened when Malenkov assumed the top position and it was our best shot because he and Khrushchev fought each other for control, which made the government more vulnerable than it had been in years. The problem, Thomas, was that we couldn’t pull it off. All along, Back Channel had believed itself to be stronger and better supported than it was. But when the time came, only the old-timers like me who had been around during the time of the Tsar were willing to lay our lives on the line for a new revolution. The others had lived so long under the iron fist of Communism that they didn’t believe we could succeed and they feared being arrested as traitors. Ultimately, Khrushchev gained the upper hand and here we are, now more than forty years removed from the event that defined our purpose and we are nothing more than a small group of secret communicators. Our power has long been tapped. But then you came along two years ago and your interest in us and belief that we were larger and greater than we are reignited the fire that has driven our core members all these years. You gave an old boys club a new injection of purpose and it was like the old days. We’ve always had our ways of intercepting communications; I mean, we’re not amateurs. But that’s all we’ve been able to do. The foot soldiers have all died off or lost interest. Others will take the secrets to their graves, but in the interest of self-preservation they refuse to participate in further actions. We had become, in essence, a group of old men whose hobby was intercepting and decoding messages. We were watchers from the outside with no hope any longer of being the instruments of change. And then you called.”

  “I don’t understand. If you’re just a bunch of old guys longing for the glory days of the imperial realm what could a phone call from me do to change things? You just said you don’t have any foot soldiers anymore,” Tom asked.

  “We have much more than foot soldiers now. The moment those missiles were discovered in Cuba and the battle lines were drawn, everything came down to the communication trail. War will begin or be avoided based on what happens with that communication. If we control the communication, if we can manipulate it to our advantage, then our ‘foot soldiers’ are the entire Soviet military. They will do the work for us. It’s brilliant, really. The government we so hate will use its mighty forces to obliterate itself. All we have to do is a variation on what we’ve been doing for decades; intercept the messages and decode them. Only now, we inject our own messages to achieve the ends we desire,” the old man said.

  “You desire the destruction of the modern world?” Thomas nearly screamed. “You’re not idealists for some lost, romantic view of the motherland. You’re madmen, willing to kill millions of people because you couldn’t have your own way. Is that it, Boris? You couldn’t win any other way so you’ll take the coward’s way out and burn it all down?”

  “Thomas, it’s only cowardly if there is no greater purpose in the end. With a greater purpose it then becomes an act of self-sacrifice—of heroism. Russia is a big country and there are still loyalists ready to rebuild. As a matter of fact, there are a few thousand of them in a remote village in Siberia, a place your government would likely not bother targeting with its nuclear arsenal. Yes, Moscow and the other population centers would be gone, but in a hundred years the seeds of the motherland would be rooted deeply enough to bring forth the new Russia that resembles the old one, but with the principals of freedom and democracy that your country so enjoys.”

  Tom was sitting across from him with his head down. He looked completely defeated.

  “Think about it, Thomas. Your citizens have been volunteering to die for your ideals for two hundred years. What makes this different? We will be our nation’s George Washington and its Patrick Henry. ‘Give me liberty or give me death’, right Thomas?”

  “And the American nation? You would wipe us out to save your Siberian remnant?” Thomas asked.

  “Collateral damage, I’m afraid. Isn’t that a term your government uses?”

  Tom stood. He looked at his watch and saw that it was after 1 a.m. The thirteenth day.

  “You didn’t plan on one thing, Boris. You forgot that communication is a two-way street. In a few hours the world will wake up to learn that an agreement has been reached between the United States and the Soviet Union. Some of the details will remain secret, but the gist is your country will pack up its toys and get them the hell out of the Western hemisphere. I don’t know what will happen to you, although I’m sure it won’t be the glorious end you had hoped for.”

  “You can’t stop it now, Thomas. The fuse has already been lit,” the old man said.

  “I didn’t have to stop it. You stopped it yourself,” Tom answered.

  Bespalov looked confused and agitated. Tom realized the man had no idea his secret had been discovered.

  “The teletype, my old friend. I found your machines in your apartment. Didn’t you wonder how I found you here? I used your old machine, the one with the broken ‘H’ key, to send a new message through the pipeline. Your cover has been blown and you’re exposed. Your plan is off and I imagine with the number of KGB spies in this country they’re pretty hot on your trail by now, which means I really must be going.”

  As he stood to leave a thought crossed Tom’s mind. “You know, you remind me of the Wizard of Oz.”

  The old man smirked. “How is that, Thomas?”

  “When the curtain is pulled back you’re just a little man making a lot of noise and frightening people with smoke and mirrors, but you have no real power.”

  Tom started for the door but turned back one last time to speak to the man he had thought was a friend. He saw that the old man had slumped in his chair and his face showed a look of total and complete defeat. Tom briefly wondered if he would avail himself of the cyanide hanging around his neck to avoid capture. Or maybe there was no such thing. It might have been a lie like so much of the story he had spun, or maybe just a spy game cliché. Tom felt nothing but disgust for him.

  “You should have gone with the Tsar and his family when they were taken from Tsarskoe Selo. You could have died a noble death with them in that basement. Then you would have been heralded as a martyr. Now it won’t matter what name you call yourself. Your countrymen will call you traitor.”

  CHAPTER 81

  CALVIN WALKER

  2016

  Calvin walked into the Willard with purpose in his step. He saw Edward Chase approaching him from across the l
obby, but he threw up his hand to wave him off and continued to the elevator. When he got to his room he began tearing his clothes off. Once he was down to his boxers and socks he stood in front of the full-length mirror and what he saw stunned him.

  He ran his finger across the scar running from under his arm down and across his abdomen. Just below his right kneecap another one started and it snaked down his calf, sometimes as wide as an inch. The third scar was in the other leg. It was a huge, ugly mass concentrated in his thigh. It looked like a section of flesh and muscle had been blown away.

  When Calvin was in fourth grade he had been roughhousing on the playground with some other boys when one of them dared the others to swing as high as possible and then jump off. The winner would be the one who could land the farthest from the swing set. When his turn came, Calvin pushed with all his might and soared higher and higher with each attempt. When he knew he could swing no higher, he closed his eyes and leapt from the swing. He landed outside of the mulch in the area that was covered with tiny gravel. He came down on his right elbow and slid nearly two feet, ripping the flesh from his arm. Until today, that was the only scar his body bore. But now he had hideous scars, marks that had been made as bullets tore through his body.

  Calvin could feel himself starting to shiver but he wasn’t cold. He grabbed a t-shirt and shorts from his suitcase to dress himself and sat down on the edge of the bed. Nothing made sense and he was beginning to feel like he was losing his grip on reality. He heard a knock at the door. When he answered it he found Edward Chase standing there.

  “What happened to me?” Calvin asked without preamble.

  “May I come in?” Calvin stepped aside to allow the concierge to pass then he repeated himself.

  “What happened, Chase? Why can’t I remember?”

  “You do remember, Mr. Walker. You remember everything.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense! And there’s no way it could have happened!”

  Chase could see that Calvin was coming unglued. He convinced him to sit down and he took the seat across from him.

  “You did what you were sent to do, Mr. Walker. You stopped Kifo from detonating the bomb under the stage.”

  Calvin still wasn’t speaking. He couldn’t say what he was thinking so he let Chase continue his explanation.

  “The duffel bag bombs were duds. The police found them last night at the apartment where you met Fish. They believe they were meant to create a panic only. It’s possible the group couldn’t afford multiple bombs so they settled for one carefully placed version where it could do maximum damage. This is just conjecture, of course, but I believe the investigation will bear it out. Police found the undetonated bomb under the stage and there were no injuries. In fact, the program wasn’t even disrupted.

  Fish did not fare very well in the end. It appears his compatriots did not take kindly to being abandoned. He was found with multiple gunshot wounds and the others have scattered to the winds. Thankfully it appears Fish was the only casualty in this unfortunate episode.”

  “You know that’s not right,” Calvin said softly. “If what you’re telling me is true, then everything happened the way I remember it.” He turned to look directly at Chase with a pained expression. As he continued to speak he became more emotional. “The pain was excruciating. I felt the blood draining from my body. I was getting weaker and weaker and I could hear the voices around me saying ‘we’re losing him.’ I thought about my wife and kids and my parents and siblings. I won’t say I saw my life flash before my eyes, but I was hyper aware of everything I was leaving behind. Then the voices around me seemed farther away and muffled and I couldn’t understand them anymore. I started to feel really cold and my vision became like a tunnel and then went black completely. The last thing I remember hearing was the sound of Dr. King’s voice as he was giving his speech. I don’t know how I could hear that and nothing else, but that’s what I heard just as clearly as I can hear my own voice right now. And then there was nothing. I was gone, Mr. Chase. Dead on the ground beside the Lincoln Memorial. And if that doesn’t convince you then how do you explain this?”

  He tossed a printout of an old newspaper page down on the table in front of Chase. On the way back to the hotel he had made a stop at a public library branch. He could have just looked it up online, but he wanted to see the actual microfilm newspaper from the day after the march. He found what he was looking for buried on the fourth page. It was the story of a man who had been shot at the march at the same time and in the same place as Calvin had been standing. The article went on to say the shooting appeared to be unrelated to the event and that no others were injured. The suspect had not been caught and there was no mention of the stage bomb or anything else. Either there was some bad reporting or someone had gone to great lengths to create distance between the shooting and the larger event itself. But none of that really mattered to Calvin. The only thing that he cared about was one line at the end of the second paragraph.

  The unidentified victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

  Chase read the article and considered how he would explain what happened to Calvin. In all his years as the concierge, he had helped shepherd people through historical events, but he had never lost a traveler before this. He had heard of other guides who had and how that turned out each and every time, but since he hadn’t experienced it himself he was afraid to believe it could be true. He certainly didn’t want to give any of his charges false hope.

  “Mr. Walker, I have been doing this a long time, but there are others in the world who have much more experience than I. Stories have circulated and I had reason to believe it was possible, but I was never sure, until today.”

  “Sure of what?” Calvin asked.

  “For whatever reason, everything you experienced while traveling really happened. All your actions, emotions, even the things you were able to taste and smell were all real. And yes, you did die on the ground beside the Lincoln Memorial. But from what I have been able to learn from others who do what I do, those who die while traveling return to their normal lives just as those who do not die during the experience. At least that’s what I’ve been able to gather because it’s an extremely rare occurrence.”

  Calvin was trying to let the idea sink in.

  “So what you’re telling me is that no matter what I did I was going to be safe the whole time? That I couldn’t be killed?”

  “I can’t say that with certainty, Mr. Walker. There are many things I don’t know and it’s often very troubling to me, but I know that’s no consolation for you. I’m not even sure there are any hard and fast rules for what we’re doing here. Like you, and like everyone in your situation, I go forth on faith a good deal of the time. I’m very happy that you’re here and safe. I just wish I could tell you more.”

  Both men sat in silence as Calvin tried to contemplate what that meant. Finally Chase spoke again. “It doesn’t really matter what could have happened because you’re here and you were able to right the wrongs. Kifo is not a household name now so they clearly didn’t regroup. You put a stop to it. You met a man who had a tremendous impact on history and you had a tremendous impact as well although it will remain a secret. Since you fixed everything, that little news story about someone being shot will stay buried like a million other unsolved crimes in United States history. For all practical purposes, it never happened. And that means everything that was supposed to happen did happen. You can overthink it, but you’ll never figure it all out. Trust me. I’ve had to accept that I’ll never have all the answers either. Just know that you were here for a purpose and you fulfilled that purpose.”

  It wasn’t everything either of them wanted to understand, but somehow it was enough.

  Later that afternoon Calvin said goodbye to Chase and caught a flight back to Chattanooga. The kids were glad to see him, but his wife noticed he was strangely quiet. He’d been struggling all the way home with whether or not to tell her, or anyone, about what had happened to him. It was
all just too much for the human mind to comprehend and he was already convincing himself it had been a misunderstanding of some sort. He just couldn’t make two and two add up to ten.

  After dinner when the kids could stand it no longer, he went upstairs and changed into his casual shorts and shirt before hauling his suitcase up onto the bed. He unpacked the football jersey, miniature mobile, and the King statue replica. He was getting ready to go back downstairs to bestow the loot upon the waiting kids when he saw something sticking out from under his gray suit. He reached in and pulled out several sheets of paper. They were the handwritten notes Dr. King had allowed him to keep. He reread them, taking in the prose with new eyes. Tears were welling up in his eyes when his wife walked into the room. He didn’t care whether it had been real or not. Something profound had happened to him.