The Berlin Conspiracy

by Tom Gabbay

  “The White House dispatch yesterday said—”

  “I know what the dispatch said,” he said calmly, taking aim and releasing. “I wrote the fucking thing.”

  “It says the brigade doesn’t expect help from U.S. forces.”

  “That was true yesterday.”

  “You gonna send a new dispatch?”

  “I can’t get into this with you.” He flushed.

  “Are we lying to the president of the United States?”

  He gave me a long hard look and shook his head. “I hope you’re not gonna cause trouble, Jack.”

  He stood there waiting for me to reassure him, but I just stared back at him. I guess he took my silence to mean that I might cause trouble, although I’m not sure what I would’ve done. Anyway, he must’ve figured I’d be less of a risk if I was in on it. He adjusted his Jockey shorts and poured himself a glass of water.

  “You didn’t hear what you’re about to hear. … Right?”

  I nodded and he went on.

  “We’re not just blowing smoke up the Cubans’ ass. We have reason to believe that the president will change his mind and send in the troops … once the situation on the ground becomes clear.”

  “What situation?” I asked.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he stalled.

  “What situation?” I repeated.

  “We expect an attack on Guantánamo.” He gulped the water, watched my reaction though the bottom of the glass. He was talking about Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. naval base located on the southeastern tip of Cuba. It had been in American hands for sixty years, since Teddy Roosevelt leased the land from the government of the day.

  “Castro isn’t stupid enough to attack Guantánamo—” I stopped short as the realization hit me. “Castro isn’t going to attack, is he?”

  Something that almost passed for a smile started to form on Fisher’s lips. “Not unless he’s suicidal.”

  “We are,” I completed the thought, hoping Fisher would laugh in my face. He didn’t.

  “Not us, per se.” He dropped onto the bed and stretched out, arms crossed behind his head. He was eager to talk now, so I let him.

  “We’ve been training a group of Cubans up in Louisiana for about six months. Deep-cover stuff. They’re in the Gulf now, headed for Cuba southeast, and Fidel himself would take them for Cuban army regulars, down to the buckles on their boots. All we do is point ‘em at Guantánamo twelve hours after the brigade hits the beach, Kennedy gets word that Castro’s forces have attacked the base, and presto chango, here come the Marines. Neat idea, huh?”

  Neat was an understatement. It was inspired. Also dangerous, misguided, insane, and probably treasonous.

  “What about casualties?” I asked, trying to stay cool.

  “Sometimes you have to look at the big picture,” he shrugged.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I let out a low whistle, which made Fisher a bit uneasy.

  “This doesn’t leave the room, Jack. We are clear on that, aren’t we?” I ignored him, absentmindedly went to the window, and peeked through one of the wooden slats at the pitch-black world outside. “I hope you’re not gonna make me sorry I brought you in on this,” he said.

  “Well…” I took a deep breath, trying to keep the lid on, then turned to face him. “I do think it’s kind of problematic.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said slowly. “I really am, but, well, it’s tough shit really. The ship has sailed, literally.”

  “Let me be sure I’ve got it straight. You’ve ordered an attack on an American base … ?”

  “That’s right,” he said flatly.

  “Sending trained mercenaries in to kill American boys …”

  He shrugged.

  “And you don’t see any problem with that?”

  “Would you rather those Cubans get massacred and have Castro go to the United Nations and gloat? Because that’s what’s gonna happen if the Marines don’t land. We wouldn’t have a fucking chance.”

  “Jesus Christ…” was all I could say. They had set up a suicide mission so they could scam the president into launching a U.S. invasion of a Soviet client state.

  “This just isn’t right, Henry.”

  Fisher narrowed his eyes and looked across the room with growing apprehension. “What do you mean by that, Jack?” he asked. “Not right in what sense?”

  You couldn’t really blame the guy for not being sure. It just wasn’t a phrase that you heard very often in our business. In fact, I couldn’t recall one instance in eight years when I’d heard someone bring up the question of right or wrong in the sense of moral or immoral. There was effective or ineffective, productive or nonproductive, safe or unsafe, and a hundred other risk assessments, but never right or wrong in that sense. Of course, I’d never come across an operation where foreign nationals had been trained to kill Americans soldiers in order to con the president into starting a war. It was new territory for me.

  “You know, Henry”—I tried to sound matter-of-fact about it—”to some people this would look a hell of a lot like an act of treason.”

  “Treason?” He chuckled uncomfortably. “For Christ’s sake, do you think I’m running this on my own? This has support from the top.”

  “But not the president…”

  “That chickenshit Irish bastard fucked this operation before it started!” He sat up sharply. “Did you know he canceled the second air strike? Castro’s still got half his air force intact and our ball-less president won’t even provide air cover! It’s a damn good thing we have a contingency plan because that cute Kennedy bullshit smile ain’t gonna win this one for us.” He reached into the drawer of his bedside table, took out a handgun, and removed the safety. I thought it would be best to ignore it. “For Christ’s sake,” he concluded, “Khrushchev will have him for breakfast!”

  He pointed the weapon at my chest.

  “You gonna shoot me?” I forced a laugh.

  “I ought to fucking shoot you,” he said. “But I’m just gonna arrest you for a while.”

  “Arrest me? For what?”

  “We’re in Nicaragua, Jack. I don’t need a fucking reason.”

  I spent the next three nights on a moldy cot, sharing an eight-foot-square cell with a variety of lizards, spiders, and large, dive-bombing mosquitoes. I devoted the first night to thinking up ways I could maim, cripple, dismember, and disembowel Henry E. Fisher. After exhausting all the possibilities, I slept for a couple of hours, waking at sunrise. I realized that the brigade would be hitting the beach about then and wondered if the Marines would be following and what might go down after that. I lay there all day, listening to the jungle, thinking how this was the perfect scenario for the suicidal end of an insane world.

  A group of anti-Castro Cubans posing as pro-Castro Cubans are sent in by American spooks to kill American soldiers, forcing an unsuspecting president to order an all-out invasion. The Soviet Union takes exception, so, unable to save Cuba, their tanks roll into West Berlin. Street battles ensue and NATO forces are quickly overwhelmed by superior forces. Now Washington is faced with a choice: surrender Europe or go nuclear. No prizes for guessing which option wins the day. We launch, they launch, and within twenty minutes the insanity is over. All because some guys playing war had a “neat idea.” If it didn’t happen this time, it would the next, or the time after that. And it wasn’t just our guys—the boys on the other side were playing with the same box of matches.

  I remembered Sam’s advice when I’d told him I was being assigned to the Cuba Project. “Get out of it,” he’d said bluntly. “Storming the beaches ain’t part of our job description.”

  I didn’t get it then, now I did.

  At some point I realized that it was over for me. I was out of the game now—not a decision as much as a realization. The agency was no place for moral dilemmas. I guess I didn’t mind that much really. My doubts had been building for a while and I’d always kept an image of me, a beach, a boat, and a ty
pewriter tucked away for this eventuality. I just didn’t expect to face it for a few more years.

  Fisher reappeared on the afternoon of the third day. He unlocked the cell and stepped inside, looking like hell. “The Guantánamo team got cold feet,” he explained. “They never got off the boat.”

  “What about the brigade?” I asked.

  “They made some progress at first, then got pinned down by a few militia. Nothing really, small-arms fire, that’s all. But they couldn’t break out and it gave Castro time to get his forces into place. He drove them back onto the beach, cut ‘em to shreds.” What he didn’t say, and didn’t have to, was that the brigade hadn’t tried to break out because they expected the Marines to be landing any minute. I found out later that the last radio message from the men stranded on the beach was, “Heading for the swamp! Can’t wait for you!”

  Fisher leaned against the damp concrete wall. He clearly hadn’t slept in three days. “So what about us, Jack?” he asked. “Do we have a problem?”

  “Let me ask you something.” I stood up to face him. “If the Guantánamo thing was approved at the top, why did you feel you had to lock me up? What did you think I was gonna do?”

  He gave me a look, narrowing his eyes while he considered the question. “You were talking like you might go outside the command structure.”

  “You mean outside the Company?”

  “Yeah. Outside the Company.”

  “You were right,” I nodded. “I might have. Or I might not have.”

  “And now?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” I shuffled toward the door.

  “That would be ill-advised, Jack.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks for your concern,” I said as I walked out, leaving Fisher in the cell, leaning up against the wall.

  As it turned out, Kennedy got a smoother ride in Miami than anyone had expected. Forty thousand Cuban exiles—men, women, and children—rose to cheer as he and Jackie walked across the field to the fifty-yard line. The first lady was the warm-up act, not that they needed warming up, but she pushed them over the edge. She spoke in fluent Spanish, breathlessly saying how much she admired the members of the brigade and how she hoped that her young son would grow up to be half as courageous as those brave combatants for freedom. She laid it on pretty thick and they lapped it up like she really meant it.

  I was standing on the sidelines with Sam when I spotted Fisher on the opposite side of the field, behind the president. He was with a half dozen of the returning prisoners, men I recognized from the briefing at Happy Valley, though their faces showed the transformation of optimistic young officers into solemn men who had learned a hard lesson in reality. They watched expressionless as Jackie wrapped it up and, accompanied by thunderous applause, returned to her husband’s side. I thought Fisher spotted me, too, but he pretended not to.

  I leaned into Sam’s ear. “What’s he up to these days?”

  “He was working with Harvey King’s group.”

  Harvey was a legendary character at the agency. A fat egomaniac addicted to booze, hookers, and guns, he was the master of “black ops”—actions that were better kept outside normal channels. In his midfifties, he was as reclusive as he was infamous, a shadowy figure who operated on the edges with few restraints.

  “Why ‘was’?” I asked.

  “Harvey’s out,” Sam said with a hint of a smile. “Although he doesn’t know it yet.”

  “Harvey King out?” I said, more than a little shocked. It was like Disney letting Mickey Mouse go. “What the hell happened?”

  “Kennedy fired him,” Sam grinned.

  “No shit.” I shook my head. “What for?”

  “Bobby found out he was putting Mafia hit men onto Castro.”

  “Since when do the Kennedys object to doing business with the mob?”

  “When it’s not their idea,” he said, in a way that meant the discussion was over.

  Kennedy stepped up to the podium, ready to give his prepared speech, but he was cut off by one of the brigade officers, another face I remembered from Happy Valley. The president seemed taken aback, unsure what was going on, until the Cuban offered him a folded brigade flag. Kennedy unfurled it for the stadium and got a huge cheer. He put his notes away and turned to the microphone.

  “Commander,” he said, sounding genuinely moved, “I want to express my great appreciation to you for making the United States the custodian of this flag.” Then, his voice rising with emotion, he declared, “I can assure you that it will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana!”

  The place went wild. I turned to Sam and had to shout above the din. “I thought they hated him!”

  “He had a meeting with the leaders yesterday,” he yelled back. “Made a lot of promises that he can’t keep!”

  I looked over at Fisher, who was leaning into the ear of one of the exile leaders. It was hard to believe that the Cubans still trusted this guy, but who knows what crap he was feeding them. I thought about how they’d react when they heard Harvey was being dumped. It would be like a second betrayal, and I wondered if the Kennedy boys knew what they were playing with.

  The president stepped away from the podium and walked to the sideline, where he started shaking hands with the returning prisoners. Everyone moved in on him, and suddenly we were in the crowd and Kennedy was standing right in front of us. He leaned in and spoke into Sam’s ear.

  “Looks like I’m a hit!” He flashed his famous teeth and brushed his hair back.

  “Yes, sir, it certainly does,” Sam agreed. Kennedy glanced over at me, and Sam pulled me forward. “This is lack Teller, Mr. President. He used to work with us, now he just goes fishing.”

  Kennedy smiled and leaned over. “The spy business didn’t agree with you?”

  “Let’s just say we didn’t always see eye to eye, Mr. President.”

  “I know the feeling!” he said, and moved on.

  The crowd started stomping their feet and shouting, “Guerra! Guerra!” War, they demanded passionately, but they would once again be disappointed by Kennedy.

  SIX

  Powell had been giving me the cold shoulder since picking me up to go out to the airport, so we just stood there on the tarmac, not saying a word. He was pissed off that I was holding out on him about the Colonel, which I could understand, but he was acting like a wronged woman about it. I was glad Sam was coming in to save me.

  After leaving the house on Berlinerstrasse, I’d walked back to the Kempinski, where I knew either Johnson or Chase would be ready to take me “into custody.” I was relieved to find it was the young Texan laid out on the king-size mattress, eyes closed, hands folded across his chest, like a corpse waiting for a funeral. He was fully dressed except for his eyeglasses and shoes, which were sitting beside the bed, military style, at a precise ninety-degree angle to the wall.

  “You know,” he said without moving a muscle, “I never woulda believed a bed could be as comfortable as this one is. It’s like floating on air.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t let me disturb you,” I said, grabbing my wallet off the dresser top.

  He lay there a beat, reluctant to end his transcendental experience, then smoothly swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the mahogany bed. He removed a handkerchief from his pants pocket and gave his eyeglasses a quick polish before fitting them onto his face.

  “You’re in a mess of trouble,” he said almost sympathetically.

  “Really?” I started counting the bills in the wallet, first the marks then the dollars. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense since I had no idea how much had been in there to begin with, but Johnson didn’t know that. He watched patiently until I’d finished and put the billfold away.

  “I’ll hang on to your passport,” he informed me as he pulled his shoes on and laced them up. “I guess it wasn’t the smartest thing you ever did to leave that stuff behind.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I replied.

  He stood up and smoothed the be
d out, carefully eliminating any trace of his presence. “I’d better let the chief know I’ve located you,” he said, reaching for the phone. I pointed out that I was the one who’d located him, but he wasn’t interested in the nuance. He dialed out and waited.

  “Shame to bother him at this hour,” I said. “He’s probably asleep.”

  “Oh, he’ll want to see you right away,” he assured me with a smile. “No doubt about that.”

  BOB—Berlin Operations Base—was located on the grounds of U.S. Army headquarters in the southwest corner of the city. The huge gated complex of two-story stone buildings on Clayallee was built for the Luftwaffe in 1938 and was home to Hermann Göring for much of the war. In ‘45, the U.S. Army confiscated the facility, which hadn’t suffered too much damage in Allied bombing, and the military government, headed by Eisenhower, established itself there. Ten years later, the relatively new Central Intelligence Agency needed offices for its expanding Berlin operations and was allocated a building in the compound. The Company and the military had maintained a cordial but mutually mistrustful relationship since then.

  Powell was waiting in a windowless interrogation room on the second floor, feet up on a long table, flipping through a copy of Life magazine with an elfish Shirley MacLaine on the cover. His checkered shirt and casual slacks made him look almost normal, but that impression was quickly rectified when he fixed me with a cold, hard stare as I was escorted in.

  “Thanks, Andy,” he said, eyes locked on me. “Go home and get some sleep.”

  “Feel free to use the suite,” I tossed out as he exited. “I don’t think I’ll be needing it tonight.” Johnson glanced back with a hint of a smile, which I took to mean he might just take me up on it. The kid was okay. We’d talked on the way over and I found out that he was the youngest of seven boys, joined the Marines at seventeen, made the Green Berets, and was recruited by the agency out of Laos. He’d spent some time in Guatemala on the Cuba Project, but I skirted the subject and he didn’t press me, which I appreciated.

  I took a seat across from Powell, who showed signs of rigor mortis. That was fine with me—he could give me the evil eye all night and I’d be very happy. There was a pack of Kents on the table, so I reached across and helped myself. I noticed that the magazine, which he’d set aside, was open to a photo spread of a Buddhist monk who’d committed suicide in Saigon by dousing his body with gasoline then setting himself ablaze. The picture was making all the papers and getting Vietnam a lot of unwelcome attention, from our perspective anyway. The monk was protesting against the regime of President Diem, a Catholic who by all accounts treated the Buddhists pretty badly—his troops had recently fired into a street demonstration and killed nine monks. All this made things awkward for us since we had about sixteen thousand military “advisors” supporting Diem’s fight against Ho Chi Minh. But the way I heard it, Diem was more concerned about the Buddhists than he was about the Communists and there were rumors that he might even be talking peace with the North. If that was true, his days were numbered, and it wouldn’t be a very high number.