by Tom Gabbay
Harvey rotated back toward me. “Did you take that advice, Jack? Did you keep your mouth shut?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you tell me if you hadn’t?”
“No.”
“Regardless of what we do to you, whatever interrogation technique we might use, is there any way in hell that we could be one hundred percent sure that you told us about everyone you ever discussed the Guantánamo operation with?”
“I might give you names, but you wouldn’t know if they were the right ones or if I’d given you all of them.”
“That’s right,” Harvey said. “I agree with you. And what else do you know, Jack?”
“Regarding … ?”
“Let’s stick to Cuba. Would you say that you’re fairly knowledgeable about what went on down there?”
“I was involved in some interesting operations.”
“Would it be fair to say that you have quite a few connections with personnel and events that occurred in the Cuba action?”
“That would be fair to say, yes.”
“How many people know that you were part of Zapata? What would you guess, if you included everyone you came into contact with while you were assigned to the task force?”
“A couple dozen, I guess. Maybe more.”
“So at least two dozen people, probably more, can connect you to the Company’s Cuba operations.”
“That’s right.”
“And there’s every possibility that you talked to people outside the agency about the Guantánamo operation. You don’t have to answer that, I’m just making a point.” He turned toward Sam again. “The point being that this is as fucked up a choice for cover as I can imagine! What the fuck were you thinking?!”
“Take it easy, Harvey,” Sam warned. King wasn’t known for his diplomacy, but Sam wasn’t known for taking any shit. “We can make this work.”
“It’s sloppy,” Harvey said. “We’re supposed to be using him for cover and we’ve got our fingerprints all over the fucking guy!”
“A good guy gone bad,” Sam said. “We can sell it. We’ve got pictures.”
“It opens up too many doors,” Harvey said. “Doors we all want under lock and key. I recommend we abort and come up with an alternative site.”
There was a long, heavy silence. I wondered why Sam didn’t step in, try to get things back on track, then I realized that one way or another, he was willing to sacrifice me in order to buy a bit more time. I was starting to wonder if I had a way out when the Pepsi man piped up.
“We go,” he said in a distinct Texas twang. “If there’s some cleanin’ up to do after, we do it, that’s all.”
Harvey and Rosetti exchanged a look. This clearly wasn’t a guy they could just shrug off. Rosetti spoke first.
“There are programs in Cuba that are happening at this very moment that cannot be compromised—”
“You mean like assassinating Castro?” the Texan interrupted. “Come on now, that’s small potatoes compared to what we’re talkin’ about here.”
“The individuals I represent don’t see it as ‘small potatoes,‘” Rosetti said coolly. “In fact, they see it as very large potatoes.”
“Castro’s gonna be taken care of once this thing gets done,” the man in the bow tie said. “And nothin’s gonna come out we can’t handle. Jack Teller’s an unstable individual with leftist tendencies who was directed by the agents of communism to assassinate the president of the United States. Nothing about his past associations with the CIA—or organized crime, for that matter—will ever reach the public’s ears. And I’m not just saying that. I can guarantee it, one hundred percent.”
Another uncomfortable silence ensued. Harvey finally broke it.
“You wanna tell us more about that?”
The Texan paused for effect, offered up a catbird smile, and polished off his soda. “My people,” he said slowly, narrowing his eyes and enunciating each syllable, “want to rid our great country of this nigger-lovin’ traitor before he can do irreparable harm. In that regard, they have come to an understanding with a certain gentleman who I won’t name, but y’all know who I’m talkin’ about. This individual is in a position to make assurances that no awkward questions will be asked. And that’s the way it is. No awkward questions will be asked.”
Harvey and Rosetti exchanged a look and so did Sam and!
“Now we’ve got a perfect opportunity here,” the Texan continued. “One that ain’t gonna come along again, not before the election. We’ve got a foreign locale that’s right on the Kremlin’s doorstep, we’ve got pictures of our killer associating with a certified Communist agent, and we’ve got a promise that the right people will look the other way. I’ll tell you truly, boys, I don’t know what in hell else you want. Hasn’t anybody in this room got any goddamned guts?”
I was dismissed at that point, escorted back to my room by the unassuming butler, who I assumed was armed to the teeth. There was no shower in the adjoining bathroom, so I filled the tub with scalding water and lay there with a hot washcloth covering my face, trying to get my head around what I’d just heard.
This wasn’t a bunch of renegade spooks getting revenge for Cuba and it wasn’t about payback for double-crossing the mob, either. Both had their reasons to get rid of Kennedy, but this was bigger than the Company or the syndicate. They were just the hired hands.
The man in the red bow tie, he was the insidious face of the true “danger from within.” He could’ve been the local pharmacist, the high-school geometry teacher, or the man behind the screen door explaining why you needed more life insurance. Your good neighbor who mowed his lawn every Saturday, went to church on Sunday, and rooted for the home team, he was a hardworking, God-fearing, full-blooded American who smiled and said “nice morning” over the garden wall as he got into his clean car at seven thirty sharp and drove off, well under the speed limit. His dog never pissed on your grass and his lights were always out by ten o’clock. He was safe and ordinary and he was one of us. And that’s why he was so fucking dangerous.
My people, he’d said, want to rid our great country of this nigger-lovin’ traitor before he can do irreparable harm. Who were these people that wrapped themselves in the flag like they owned it, soiling it with their brutally repulsive conceit? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free and we’ll be happy to string ‘em up for you,” that’s who they were. But unlike their emissary, these men didn’t live among us. They existed behind a wall of their own—one built with money, power, and, above all, with hatred. You didn’t have to know their names to know what to call them. They were the good old boys, red-blooded American Fascists who were sick and tired of watching that Catholic, nigger-lovin’ Communist ruin their country, so they were gonna take it away from him and hand it over to somebody they could trust.
And no awkward questions would be asked.
TWENTY
A medium-rare sirloin steak with baked potato, tossed salad, and a bottle of ’54 Châteauneuf du Pape were waiting for me back in the room—and so was Horst. He was sitting silently on the edge of the bed, staring at me with heartfelt contempt.
“What’s the matter with you?” I said, toweling my hair dry.
“I think you know.”
“I’m the one who should be pissed off,” I said. “After all, it was you that set me up.”
“I’ve brought your dinner,” he said, standing up. “I can say that I hope you choke on it.”
“What did Sam tell you?” I called after him as he headed for the door.
“The truth about you,” he said, stopping to give me a bleak look. “Perhaps I have expected too much, but I thought you might find again your ideals and rejoin the battle.”
“I’m not Humphrey Bogart, Horst.”
“You can make a joke if you like, but perhaps to be a little bit like Bogie is not such a bad thing.”
“Even Bogie wasn’t like Bogie,” I said. “Nobody is.”
&nbs
p; “Is this the excuse you tell yourself so you can betray your country?”
“I’m not betraying my country.”
“I have seen the photos,” he said dramatically.
“What photos?”
“Of you and the STASI colonel in a secret meeting.”
“So?”
“Sam has told me—”
“For Christ’s sake, Horst, wake up!” I was losing patience. “Sam will tell you what’s convenient for whatever he’s cooking up. He wanted you to set me up at the warehouse, so he told you I’m a traitor to get you to do it. He’s a lying bastard, like the rest of them. And that’s coming from somebody who actually likes the guy.”
I poured a glass of wine, swirled it around in the glass, and held it up to the light. It was a good, rich vintage, but I didn’t have a taste for it. I put it aside.
“Why, then, are you under arrest?” he asked skeptically.
“What do you want me to say, Horst?”
“Just the truth,” he answered.
“I’m afraid the truth is kind of elusive around here. Everyone’s got their own version of it.”
“Then tell me your version,” he said, easing back into the room.
“I don’t think you’ll like it,” I said.
“I would still rather know it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sit down, because it might take a while. This kind of truth doesn’t come in a neat little package.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and listened intently as I laid it out for him. I told him about Cuba and why I quit the game, and how Sam called me back into service to come to Berlin, and what the Colonel had told me about the plot to hit Kennedy. I told him about Kovinski and Iceberg and how he himself had unwittingly helped them set me up as their new patsy, then I explained how Sam was working inside the conspiracy, trying to get to the source, and about my encounter with Johnny Rosetti, Harvey King, and the man with the red bow tie. Finally I told him about “no awkward questions being asked.”
He sat there with a stunned look on his face for a moment after I’d finished. “What can I do?” he finally said.
“Go home,” I answered firmly. “And forget about all this. Go back to doing an honest day’s work, like stealing cars.”
“It must be stopped,” he said.
“I’m not sure it can be.”
“It must be!”
He stood up and paced back and forth a couple of times. “I believed you were an agent for STASI, which is no different than an agent for the Soviets!” he said frantically. “If I believed it, the world will believe it!” He stopped in his tracks and looked at me, an expression of alarm on his face. “What will be the consequences of this?!”
I shouldn’t have told him, of course. I’m not even sure why I did, except that I wanted to remove that look of contempt he gave me when I came into the room. I think I probably liked being Bogart in his eyes and I wasn’t willing to give it up. It turned out to be a costly conceit.
He dropped back onto the bed with wilted shoulders, looking totally defeated. “How can it be?” he said, more to himself than to me. “How can something like this happen with America?”
“What do you think America is, Horst?” I asked, not expecting an answer. He frowned and looked down into his lap, which I took to be an expression of disappointment, or dejection, or something else. In fact, he was formulating his answer. He began softly.
“I was nine years old in the summer of 1948 when the Russians blocked all of Berlin. We had no food, no electricity, and no way to escape. It sounds like a nightmare, I know, but it was the most amazing time for me. Do you know how I spent this summer? Each day I woke at dawn and, with my friends, we ran to the same place, just near the airport, to climb onto a pile of rubble where we could watch the airplanes land. They came one after the other, night and day, American planes filled with not just food and coal, but also with hope. Hope that we could remain free … We would stand there, all day sometimes, and wave our arms to each of the pilots as he crossed in front of us, hoping that he would see us and understand that we wanted to thank him. Then one day we saw the most fantastic thing. … As one of the planes flew over us there came a shower of boxes, each with its own small parachute, filling the sky. Do you know what was in these boxes? … Chocolates! Imagine it! Standing on the rubble of our city, with no food to eat, and the sky is raining with boxes of chocolates!” He paused to reflect on the memory for a moment, allowing himself a little smile before continuing.
“Then the next day came the same plane again and there were more boxes, and again the day after until I think every child in Berlin was getting a box of chocolates from this American pilot! It was the most amazing thing ever I have seen!” He shook his head, still in awe of the idea of the sky filled with boxes of chocolates.
I didn’t say anything because, of all things, I had a lump in my throat. What a strange condition for a terminal cynic like me to find himself in. Horst looked up and, I think, sensed my situation. He gave me a schoolboy grin, from ear to ear, and said, “Perhaps one day, when I become a big producer in Hollywood, I can make a movie from this story. It can be quite a tearjerker, don’t you think?”
I extracted a promise from Horst that he would slip away and go home in return for my assurance that I had a cunning plan to foil the bad guys and save the world. As we know, people will believe anything if it’s what they want to believe. And I believed I was rid of Horst.
I started in on the steak, but it was cold and I had no appetite anyway, in spite of not eating for over twenty-four hours. I managed to force a few bites down and was pushing the tray away when Sam came in. I think he was there to say a final good-bye, which didn’t do wonders for my confidence in the cunning plan.
“Where did you find Horst?” I asked him.
“He was after a visa,” he explained. “Wanted to immigrate. Turned down because of his police record.”
“You told him you’d get him in?”
“That’s right.”
“Do me a favor, Sam. Leave him alone.”
“Sure,” he said offhandedly, sitting down and helping himself to my dinner. “I don’t need him anymore. Why do you care?”
“I don’t know. Can you get him a visa?”
“I don’t see why not. Anything else?” Sam’s way of asking if I had any unfinished business I wanted him to take care of if I wasn’t able to.
“Can’t think of anything,” I said.
He nodded and we exchanged a brief look. There wasn’t anything to say really, and even if there was neither of us was going to say it. It wasn’t necessary.
“They’ll come for you just before sunrise,” he said. “They’ll put you in cuffs until you get there, wherever ‘there’ is.”
“It would help to know.”
“I couldn’t get it,” he said. “Harvey would see his grandmother as a security risk. But I do know that there’ll be three shooters, at least one in an elevated position, from an upper floor of a tallish building. That’s where you’ll be, too. Once the hit is confirmed and the president’s down, you’ll be given a chance to run. A Secret Service agent will be waiting around the corner to put two in your chest. The team’ll get out in the confusion and the world will be left with one lone assassin, dead as a doornail.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it on my account,” I said. “When should I make my move?”
“Go for the shooter first. If you get him, they have to abort.”
“How close will I be?”
“Not a clue,” he said sheepishly.
“How about afterward?”
“You’re on your own.”
“Jesus, Sam.”
“You’re gonna have to play it by ear,” he said, heading for the door. “Your specialty.”
“Do me a favor if it doesn’t work out, Sam.”
“Just name it,” he said.
“Die a slow and painful death.”
He chuckled and left without saying good luck. We both knew if
I had to count on luck, I’d be out of it.
I lay in the dark, hoping for sleep, exhausted but wide awake, experiencing a strange sense of stillness and serenity. It wasn’t that I was filled with confidence about what was to come. Far from it. I think I felt at peace because I’d finally put the pieces of my life together and they seemed to make some kind of twisted sense.
I didn’t need Horst to sell me on America. I was sold when I first stepped onto the crowded streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and was met with a surge of humanity hustling to get their piece of the dream. The America I found wasn’t pure or pristine, not by any stretch of the imagination, and the good guys didn’t always win. The streets weren’t paved with gold and chocolates didn’t fall out of the sky, either, but the air was filled with optimism. It was alive with possibilities, with the belief that good people who worked hard would be rewarded with a good life, free from the tyranny and constraints they’d left behind.
I saw America at its best and I saw the worst of it, but I always believed in it and I would always be there when it needed to be defended. And I don’t mean the buildings or the roads or the bridges, or even the people. I mean the idea of it. The simple idea that individual freedom is something people are born with—the state can’t give it to you, it can only take it away. That’s it. Easy to put into words but, judging by the world’s history, tough as hell to put into practice.
I’m not talking about the Fourth of July, flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it kind of freedom. That’s something else. I mean the whoever-you-are, whatever-you-do, no-matter-how-you-look or what-you-think, welcome-to-the-party, be-an-American kind of freedom.
And don’t let anyone tell you that the Soviet Union didn’t pose a threat to that kind of freedom, either, because it did. It was a brutal tyranny that stripped its people of their rights and took away their humanity, and we needed to defend against it. But what I didn’t see when I was in the front line of our secret war was the disadvantage we labored under, and the effect it was having on us. It would have been suicide to meet the enemy on the battlefield, so we were forced underground, and in that dark world we had to play the game by their rules.
