The Falcon and the Snowman

by Robert Lindsey

  When he was sixteen, Chris discovered surveyors quartering the field. His stomach tightened, and he knew what to expect.

  Several months later, he crossed the field a last time and paused to inspect a hummingbird’s dainty nest in the crotch of a snag hidden in tall grass; in it he saw a hummingbird incubating two tiny eggs. The ground shook and Chris had to step aside, and he watched an earthmover rumble forward with a cloud of gray-white smoke. The maternal courage of the hummingbird held her in her nest until the last moment, and then she fled from the trembling snag in an iridescent blur. Then the tiny nest disappeared beneath the machine.

  Chris took his grief home with him and was lectured by his father on the prerogatives of ownership, free enterprise and the construction boom. But he silently rejected all of it and went brooding to his room. Chris decided no one should own that field or any field anywhere: man, he decided, had been given the earth in trust; it was not his chattel. He decided that the concept of private property was a thing of tragedy, an evil to be abolished.

  A couple of mornings later, in an American History class, Chris listened to a lecture that reviewed the extermination of Indian tribes in the conquest of the West and the conquest of half of Mexico that left Chicanos as pariahs in what had been their own country. However, the teacher said, America had changed and matured; it was defending free expression around the world and fighting for peace in Vietnam. After class, Chris angrily slammed his text, Triumph of Democracy, into his locker.

  But he didn’t brood for long.

  That night, he enlisted two friends on a mission; they bought nine ten-pound bags of sugar, and after dark they began lugging it to his field. Before long they were scratching from poison sumac and taking cactus needles in the shin. When Mike, one of his friends, tripped for the third time in the dark, he said, “Whose idea was this, anyway?”

  “Pretend you’re in ’Nam,” Chris said.

  “At least they don’t have cactus in the jungle,” Mike said, picking up his thirty pounds of sugar.

  A half hour later they peered over a canyon wall at the construction company’s fenced equipment yard and saw the silhouette of a guard.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Mike said.

  Chris and the other friend grabbed him.

  “You didn’t tell me about a guard,” he said.

  “He’s asleep,” Chris whispered.

  “Then why isn’t he lying down?” Mike wanted to know.

  “They always sleep sitting up; that’s what my father says,” Chris said with authority.

  Before Mike had a chance to challenge the logic, his friends were moving through a hole in the fence, and very soon all three of them were assaulting the earthmovers, trucks and trenchers with sugar.

  Chris poisoned three bulldozers, emptying his sacks of sugar into their gas tanks, making sure not to spill the sugar and leave evidence.

  Fifteen minutes later, the trio met at the fence and climbed down the canyon through the brush and cactus, whooping like Iroquois.

  The assault delayed the defiling of Chris’s field for two weeks. But in the end the field perished.

  Chris visited it years later after he had begun to work at TRW. There were silver Eldorados and bronze Mercedes-Benzes and imported olive trees in place of the eucalyptus and beans; there were clipped hedges and instant lawns grown elsewhere and laid out like carpeting on his field in front of ranch and ersatz-Spanish-style homes. He spotted two matrons wearing sunglasses and tennis outfits carrying their rackets down a circular driveway to a black Porsche and swinging lumpy thighs onto red leather.

  Somewhere, he thought, beneath it all was his poor raped field, and he thought of wild blossoms growing between fallen columns in the bleached ruins of Carthage.

  14

  “Who is your friend?” Vasily Ivanovich Okana asked the American who walked into the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City during the first week of April, 1975, and announced that he had brought information about “spy satellites.”

  The KGB agent studied the stranger with a cautious smile. When Okana was apprehensive or unsure of a situation, as he was now, his charcoal eyebrows tended to bob up and down spontaneously like a pair of rafts on a choppy lake. Daulton, trying not to be distracted by the motion of the eyebrows, replied that he could not identify his friend, who had a sensitive job working for the American government. The friend, he said, wanted to defect to the Soviet Union but had a wife and two children and did not want to leave them behind. Elaborating on the brief note Chris had typed, Daulton said they had a proposition for the Soviet Union. His friend was motivated by a belief in the future of socialism, while he was a fugitive from the police on a trumped-up charge. They were prepared to deliver American defense secrets to the U.S.S.R., but expected to be paid well for them.

  There was no expression on the Russian’s face when Daulton had finished his short sales pitch.

  Without seeming to demand it, Okana asked Daulton if he had any personal identification. Daulton pulled out his wallet and offered his driver’s license. The agent made a note of his name and address and then handed the license back to him, making a complimentary remark about Southern California.

  “Would you like vodka?” he asked. Daulton said he would enjoy it, and Okana left the office where he was conducting the interview and came back a few seconds later. Within a few minutes a male servant brought in two large bottles of vodka and a bowl of iced caviar.

  The Russian said that he had once served in the United States and had polished his English there; Daulton noticed that the bobbing of his eyebrows had subsided somewhat, but there was still an apprehensive look behind his gray eyes. Daulton explained that what he had brought was only samples of the kind of information that his friend could make available to the Soviet Union. He stressed that his friend was personally involved in the operation of spy satellites and had unlimited access to secrets that he was sure the Russians would want to buy.

  Leaving Daulton with a drink in his hand, Okana excused himself, taking the computer programming cards and a twelve-inch length of paper tape used in the KG-13 and KW-7 crypto machines that Chris had given to Daulton.

  When he returned twenty minutes later, Okana carried a piece of notepaper in one hand and, referring to it, began to probe Daulton about reconnaissance satellites. From his conversations with Chris, Daulton knew enough to convince the Russian that he had more than a casual knowledge of such satellites and a secret CIA post somewhere near Los Angeles.

  Okana poured another glass of vodka for his guest and invited him to sample more caviar. Then he left the room for another conference somewhere else in the embassy. This time when he returned, he handed Daulton an envelope containing $250 in American currency—enough, he said, to finance a return trip from Los Angeles to Mexico.

  Okana was warm now and smiling continuously, although the nervous bobbing of his eyebrows reappeared from time to time to distract Daulton. Okana said that he and his associates were very much interested in the proposition made by Daulton and his friend, and they looked forward to a mutually profitable enterprise. And then he gave Daulton instructions to meet him at a Mexico City restaurant on his next trip and told him they would use passwords at future meetings. Daulton would be asked:

  “Do you know the restaurant in San Francisco?”

  And Daulton was to reply:

  “No, but I know the restaurant in Los Angeles.”

  Okana said they would also use code names to reduce the possibility of detection. Daulton, he said, was to be known as “Luis,” and he would be called “John.”

  The meeting was over, and Daulton shook hands with the KGB man.

  “Adios, John,” Daulton said.

  “Adios, Luis,” Okana said.

  And with that, a curious commerce between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and two young men from a wealthy suburb in California had begun.

  According to their plan, Chris was standing near a telephone booth that night in Hermosa Beach, another
one of the beach communities north of The Hill. At nine o’clock the phone in the booth rang, and he went inside and closed the door.

  “Hello,” he answered.

  “Hello, Mr. Philippe?” inquired a telephone operator with a Latin accent.

  “Yes,” Chris said.

  “One moment please, Mr. Philippe. Your party is on the line, Señor Gómez.”

  He heard Daulton’s voice:

  “Gracias. Buenas noches, Señor Philippe.”

  “Good evening, Señor Gómez,” Chris replied. “How’s Señora Gómez?”

  “Fuck if I know. You were right. My uncle says ‘Hi.’”

  “Simple?” Chris asked.

  “Like hell.”

  “Simple,” Chris said with I-told-you-so self-assuredness.

  “You’re crazy,” Daulton said, trying to deflate the self-assuredness. “Now do me one favor. Don’t get fired, and stay off those damned cliffs until I get back there. Man, this is going to blow your—”

  Chris hung up the phone and walked down to the edge of the ocean, breathing the salt air. He looked back at the night lights of Hermosa, the alleys and the shadows, and he turned to the luminescent Pacific surf in search of guidance. But its indifferent pounding mocked him. What are these? he asked himself. Misgivings?

  Chris had only half-expected Daulton to go through with it.

  “It’s too late, my friend,” Chris whispered aloud to himself as the white foam of the churning surf rolled toward him from the dark ocean. “We’re over the Rubicon.”

  The next day Chris drove his Volkswagen as fast as he could to the serenity of the Mojave Desert, its lonely sandscape of sagebrush and Joshua trees at once hostile and inviting to him. The enormity of what he had embarked on weighted him down. With luck, he thought, it would last a few months. He told himself that he had launched himself on a path that was certain to lead to his destruction. The blood pounded at his temples because of the knowledge of what he had unleashed.

  Chris parked the Volkswagen where the pavement ceased, and he hiked into the mountains to the first prairie falcon eyrie that he had ever found. He shouted into the desert and sobbed and shook his fist and consigned himself to the only God he knew, to nature around him, to all the cannon fodder that would ever be squandered, to the death of the nation-states and to the rocks under his feet. He wept until he decided that he had no qualms. And then he went home, resolved to let them have it right between the eyes.

  15

  The evening that Chris was alone in the desert, Daulton sat down in his $40-a-day room in the Hotel El Romano Diana in Mexico City and composed a letter to his brother, David, who was attending college in Idaho. He apologized for leaving without a formal good-bye, but said he had no choice but to flee. “Sometimes,” he said, “freedom is more important than one’s country.”

  Daulton said he was excited by the prospect of life as an expatriate which loomed ahead of him and that he hadn’t faced such an interesting challenge in years. Each man has only so many years to live, he said, and he wasn’t going to waste his being hassled. Besides, he went on, there was no way he could ever burn one of his associates in the drug trade—it was against everything he had ever learned in the Brotherhood.

  There was a happy eagerness about the letter; Daulton said he was thinking about getting a sailboat and might even take a trip to the Caribbean. He urged his brother to read a book called Paper Trip, which told how to procure identification papers, and asked him to investigate whether there was a Federal warrant—as well as a state warrant—out for his arrest. If the Feds were also looking for him, he suggested, it might make a difference in his plans to come back to the States. He did not mention his visit with the Russians, but said:

  “Hey, you could really help out if you got into a good legal situation because the bucks are going to be flowing in one month.…”

  With the wheels now in motion for his new enterprise, Daulton decided to see some of Mexico. He flew to Puerto Vallarta, a resort on the Bay of Banderas west of Guadalajara that had been a somnolent fishing village with a reputation for spectacular sailfishing jealously guarded by sport fishermen until a few gringo artists discovered its serenity during the 1950s. A few years later Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor stayed there while he made a film, The Night of the Iguana, nearby, and very soon Puerto Vallarta was a fashionable stop for jet setters and would-be jet setters.

  Lately, Daulton’s stomach had been giving him trouble—he was convinced he had an ulcer—so he decided to relax several days on Los Muertos Beach in Puerto Vallarta and uncoil some of the tension that had been tightening inside him. On the day in mid-April when Daulton had been ordered to appear before Judge Donahue to defend himself on the District Attorney’s petition to send him back to jail, he was happily lying on his back under the Mexican sun, drinking a margarita and enjoying the cool salty breezes that swept in from the Pacific.

  After he was rested and tan, he made his way back leisurely to Mexico City for a brief meeting with Okana. As prearranged, they met for dinner on April 23 in a Mexico City restaurant, where they exchanged the passwords. Okana was plainly interested now in the offer made by Daulton, and the young American was slightly surprised by the magnitude of his eagerness. He said he had been in touch with his friend and that deliveries of information would begin shortly.

  Daulton was a dutiful son, and that night he placed a call to his parents in Palos Verdes to let them know that things were going fine for him. The Lees led a busy social life, and perhaps that was why they had not always been totally informed about Daulton’s affairs since his feet-first plunge into the drug underworld.

  Despite his problems with the law, Daulton’s parents remained as loyal to him as any loving parents would. Their hope was that someday he would grow out of it.

  When he called home that evening, Daulton said that except for some trouble with his stomach, he was in good health and having the time of his life. He said he was doing a lot of sight-seeing and enjoying himself thoroughly, but Daulton didn’t mention his new business venture. His mother chided him about the missed court appointment, but Daulton told her not to worry about it.

  The same evening, he wrote a letter to his younger sister, who was attending the University of California at its Santa Cruz campus south of San Francisco. Like his earlier letter to David, it blended optimism and apprehension, hinting cryptically of a Big Deal. “I’m sitting on cash that makes all my years of deals look like peanuts,” he confided, without elaborating. “I should have gone international years ago.”

  It was a warm letter which indicated the close relationship between brother and sister. Daulton colorfully recounted some of the details of his trip to Puerto Vallarta and promised someday to give his sister a guided tour; he had been getting so much practice speaking Spanish, he joked, that he was beginning to forget his English! As if to assure his sister that he was not suffering in exile, Daulton said he’d just had a sauna and a massage after returning to Mexico City and the previous week he’d gotten a haircut, shave and manicure.

  Daulton disclosed that he was planning a quick trip to the States and at that time he would give her his car—it wasn’t any good to him anymore, and it was better to give it to her than sell it at a giveaway price. He warned her not to mention his plans for the trip to anyone, because he didn’t know how large a dragnet the cops had out for him. Glumly, Daulton wrote that he’d gotten some bad news from Los Angeles: the D.A. was going to re-try him “on some shit” and wanted to send him back to the prison farm “or worse.” Daulton made clear that under no circumstances would he go back to jail. He advised his sister, “Keep in school, this organized crime shit is expensive when you add up the alka seltzer.”

  There was, he added, one big plus about his move to Mexico: “I got that dog off my leg, the one (brown dog) that kept biting me for $300 a week.”

  Daulton had a second thought, and on the back of a page of the letter he scrawled, “I haven’t felt so good in 10 years.”


  The same night, he wrote another letter to David Lee. All was well, he said. The following day, April 24, he was planning to fly up to Mazatlán to further burnish a tan that was already unbelievable. Someday, he said, over a glass of good brandy, he would show David the pictures he’d taken on his Mexican odyssey and fill him in on some of his experiences. He repeated the earlier report to his sister about the massage and sauna and last week’s haircut, shave and manicure and said that he had bought a new suit—a tailor-made one—as well as several new shirts and a pair of shoes. If all went well, he said, he would be seeing David fairly soon, probably no later than the middle of June. “Study hard so I can put 20,000 into a legit business with you; I think I’m too hot to open a store.”

  On the back of the letter, Daulton wrote a postscript: “I’ve got a money maker going and it is in no way related to my past foolishness (narco). So don’t worry about my trying to smuggle los contrabandos en los Estados Unidos.”

  A curiously idyllic period in Daulton’s troubled existence had begun. Although the threat of jail still loomed over him, and it was too risky to return to Palos Verdes, he had settled easily into the life of expatriate beach bum. His fear of confinement ebbed away, and he dreamed of the dollars that would be rolling in soon from the new scam. It had taken him three days in Mexico City and a pinch of cocaine to muster the courage to go to the embassy. But when he had gone there he had seen something in the eyes of Okana that made him feel comfortable, even excited. The rip-off should work.

  16

  In rearing nine children, Noreen Boyce had become an expert at diagnosing childhood ailments, nursing cut fingers and looking after an occasional broken bone. She could tell by now, she thought, when a member of her brood was attempting to tell a white lie or was troubled by something in school. She had had less experience, however, with the effects of alcohol and drugs on them.