Last Witness

by Glen Carter

  Malloy continued to study the image. Twenty seconds later he leaned back in his chair. “I’ll take the negative now,” he said, reaching for his briefcase.

  Mesner obliged and a second later the negative was replaced inside its plastic sleeve and dropped by Malloy into the case. He snapped it shut.

  Jack felt the crush of disappointment, though he still had a story. Not as good as it could have been, but a hell of a yarn anyway. The last witness gives up her evidence, a mysterious and previously undiscovered artifact from the Kennedy assassination. It would make for compelling television, maybe its own show, complete with a big reveal.Geraldo had done the same with Al Capone’s safe. It turned out to be empty. Carmichael was going to wet himself once Jack pitched him on it. Jack looked at his watch. If they left now they could catch the three o’clock boat back to Bark Island. He’d dump Malloy at his rental and get him on the road back to Florida. Jack would pin him down later in Panama City and do the interview while he was comfortable and relaxed aboard his boat. “Nice try,” he said to the retired G-man, trying his best to sound sympathetic.

  Malloy wiped at the disappointment on his face. “Yeah,” he replied. “Nice try.”

  Dwayne turned to Malloy. “The FBI holding out on those Warren commission clowns? Cause this shot I’ve never seen.”

  Malloy looked dolefully at the computer monitor. “No one’s seen this before—we’re the first.”

  “Cool,” Dwayne said. “The guys are gonna blow their minds.”

  Malloy looked at him, nervously. “Guys?”

  “We hang online. Talk about the stuff old Earl and his buddies came out with. Everyone knows the Warren Commission didn’t come close to figuring it out. It was a sham.”Dwayne leaned in close.“This has got to be the best shot of Zapruder I’ve ever seen. So?”

  “Get rid of it,”Malloy ordered. “Lose it now, or I make a call and they seize every piece of equipment you got here.National Security.”

  “Like fuck,”Mesner smirked. “Who took this shot?”

  Neither of them answered.

  Mesner pointed a finger. “You were there, Special Agent Malloy. Young and full of piss and vinegar when they killed Kennedy.”

  “They?”

  “Yeah, they. Giancana’s boys, Marcello. The Cubans, the Soviets. Christ, alien invaders. Pick one. We all know Oswald was the dupe.” Dwayne looked at Jack who shook his head slowly.

  “Someone took the damn picture, Jack.” Dwayne leaned closer into the computer screen. “And since we’re all quite familiar with the usual suspects this had to be taken by someone else. Right?Where’d you get the film?”

  Malloy lifted a hand. Rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re done here.”

  “Hold up, G-man,” Dwayne shot back.

  Malloy got up to leave. “Let’s go, Doyle.”

  Jack ignored him. Shoved his face towards the computer and squinted.

  Dwayne shiftedwith a grunt, tried unsuccessfully to pull himself from his chair. “All those shooters that day.”

  Malloy was doing the ignoring now.

  “You boys got all of their stuff.”

  Malloy rolled his eyes.

  Dwayne smiled. “All but one, right,Malloy?”

  “Jack,” Malloy said, snapping a look at his watch. “We’re outta here.”

  Jack continued to study the flickering screen.

  Dwayne fixed hard on Malloy. “Never found her, eh Malloy. Woman with the scarf, remember? What was she called? ‘The Babushka Woman,’ something like that.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “You guys looked all that time because she was in the best position to prove there was a second shooter. She got the money shot cause she was standing right across from the grassy knoll. Looked everywhere for her, but shit. No Babushka Woman, right?”

  “Yeah, we looked hard,” Malloy replied, vacantly. “For too goddamn long.”

  Dwayne waited a moment, and then tapped the computer monitor. “This her work, G-man? Holy shit.This her work or what? You rope her in finally?Who is she?Not that Beverly Oliver broad.”

  Malloy turned to leave. “You coming, Doyle?”

  Jack moved closer, his eyes slits against the blue monitor light. “Hold up,” he said. “For one minute.”

  Malloy and Dwayne were both staring at him now. Malloy sat back down, deep furrows slashed his forehead.

  “Rickerby,” was all Jack said.

  “What about him?” said Malloy. Rickerby. One of the photographers standing near Zapruder during the chaos.

  Jack broke from the photo, eyes wide as he turned to face Malloy, then Dwayne. Another thirty seconds passed before he spoke again, stabbing his finger at glass. “Something’s not right,” was all he said.

  The whirring of the machines seemed like a roar as the three of them went silent.

  15

  HAVANA, CUBA

  The Georgian was home.

  Poole watched him carefully as he shuffled around his courtyard, stooping now and then to tend to some plant or flower.The old man arched his back and parted his thick white beard.He took a pull on his bottle,making Poole wonder whether he was drunk already.

  Poole flashed his eyes to the rear-view mirror. No threat. No worries. Just the lone figure standing motionless in a doorway a couple of buildings down, the yellow ember from a cigar suspended ghostlike. Poole fixed his attention again on the tiny courtyard.

  The flight from Montreal had gone smoothly. Another tourist looking forward to a few days relaxation. Ten minutes after touchdown, Poole smiled warmly at the female customs officer who smiled warmly back and then stamped his forged passport without a single question. He rented a car, accepted a map of the city he had no need of, and drove to old Havana. To the Georgian’s little house.

  Poole had been there an hour already and it was unwise to wait any longer. He’d make his move while the Georgian was still reasonably sober and Poole still had patience.

  Smoothly, he eased the door open, stepping silently into the street. Hunkering low, he slipped through the darkness.

  Poole crossed fifty feet and then a hundred more before reaching an old wooden gate that opened onto the old man’s sanctuary. Completely still, Poole listened.The Georgian hummed, slurring even in the absence of words.The gate was ajar so Poole pushed gently, stepping cat-like into the courtyard. Two seconds later he heard a sound that made him freeze.

  Click.

  “You made one mistake,” whispered the Georgian, no sign of a slur now, pressing the end of what Poole knew was a Glock into the base of his skull. Poole didn’t dare move, especially not his hands. “The glow of the cigar,” the Georgian hissed. Shifting closer, his beard tickling the back of Poole’s neck. “Blinked at me when you intersected my line of sight.”The Georgian thrust his chin in the direction of the stoop where Poole had seen the man smoking. “Not so stealthy, eh Vasily. Defeated by a stupid Cuban with his robusto stub. You were taught better than that.”

  Inwardly, Poole cursed. It had been a foolish mistake.

  “And you a namesake of the great one.”

  Poole felt him shift. Closer. Sniffing at something. Poole thought it ridiculous how the man resembled so closely the fairy-tale Santa loved by millions of children.This man, whom he witnessed execute six Chechens in their mud hovel. Including two infants in their mothers’ arms.

  “I might have smelled you,Vasily.That soap you use.”

  “Katrina liked it,” Poole replied, regretting it instantly.The gun suddenly stabbed into the back of his head.The Georgian’s breath escaped between clenched teeth. “Katrina deserved better than you.”

  The temperature rose in the space between them. Poole’s heartbeat was a thunder heard only by him. “Deserved better than both of us,” Poole whispered, slowly planting the toe of his boot into hard earth. In another second he would make his move, before the Georgian became stupid with his Glock.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said the old man. “In fact, I’mcertain
of it.”

  Poole read the change in the man’s demeanour.

  Smartly, the Georgian lowered the gun, which Poole took as a signal of surrender. He turned and swore he saw moisture in the old man’s eyes.

  “Katrina,” the Georgian muttered.

  “A good daughter to you,” said Poole. “A good wife tome.”

  Bezhan Asatiani half smiled, his eyes distant above dark brown cheeks that looked to Poole like mountain summits breaking through cumulous cloud. “It is good to see you son-in-law,” he finally said, embracing Poole. “It is good that you have come back to your old teacher.We have much to talk about.”

  “Much,” Poole replied.

  16

  CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND

  President Frederick Denton stared warmly at the man with whom he was about to make history, enjoying the fact that few people outside this room even knew of his presence on American soil.

  “You’re smiling again,” Pilious Ortega said, interrupting a point he was trying to make concerning Cuban land reforms.

  President Denton chuckled. “You’re sure you weren’t followed?”

  Ortega grinned warmly. “Quite sure.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” replied the President, comfortable with the familiarity shown by his guest. Denton nodded at the white coat standing stiffly near the door.The man walked soundlessly to a bar and began fixing drinks. Both men’s tastes were well known to the navy steward.

  “The F-16 is quite the ride,” Denton said. “And you’ll be happy to know she was fully armed.However, the Costa Ricans didn’tmuch care for that little detail.”

  Ortega shifted in his armchair,momentarily silent.

  Denton had also been given the rear seat in an F-16, and remembered how he’d felt afterward. Bends and knots from ass to appetite.

  Two crystal glasses were placed on the coffee table within reach of both men. Ortega lifted his and took a mouthful. In the dim light of the wood-paneled room the amber liquid sparkled gold. Ortega swallowed, sank into his chair, and closed his eyes. Somewhere,music played quietly while moths thudded softly against the window. In the blackness outside, Secret Service agents prowled the pine trees towering over Aspen Lodge, the President’smountain retreat.

  “Leave us please, Solomon,” Denton said after a moment.

  A door was opened and quietly closed.

  President Denton swirled the liquid in his glass, sipped quietly, and then looked at his old friend. Ortega appeared tired.The thick black mane from their days at Yale was now grey. Denton had noted a slight stoop when Ortega was shown in, making it seem as though his old university chum had actually shrunk some. Denton knew the physical changes were irrelevant.What really counted was the fire that Pilious Ortega still carried in his guts.

  In the months since Castro’s death,Ortega had exercised his own charisma in the same fashion as Fidel, but this time promising democratic reform and an end to the Marxist-Leninist dogma which had crippled the economy and which had long blocked Cuba’s inclusion in the community of free nations. Ortega, a politburo moderate, slipped naturally into the role of iconoclast, determined to dismantle what had never worked in Castro’sworld and to build on the unrealized strengths of Cuba and its people. Cubans,who were hungry for food and medicine and freedom, in that order, liked what they heard and were more than willing to allow Pilious Ortega to nurture a nationhood which had shed, thankfully, its personification in the bearded face of El Jefe.

  For months, the people waited fretfully for Raul’s soldiers to put an end to all of it, but those opportunistic generals loyal to Castro’s younger brother lost their only portal to power when he abandoned Cuba to live his final years in Spain.The military had no choice but to step back while the people, the politics, and a new ideology found footing on Cuba’s fertile landscape.

  As the newly declared leader of Cuba, Pilious Ortega had quickly managed the impossible, an arranged marriage between reformers and the revolution’s old guard, many of whom were too old to fight or had lost their way when Castro’s shrunken corpse was encased beneath twenty tons of mausoleum marble at Havana’s Cementerio Cristobal Colon.The story went that Cubans visiting the nearby grave of Amelia Goyri de Hoz respectfully never turned their backs on her saintly tomb.They never turned their backs on Castro either, though for entirely different reasons.

  Castro had always been the spine of the Revolution, the icon for a population mesmerized by his charisma if not by his politics.With the ultimate leader gone, the ideological fervour lost its strength— wilted—much in the way a doomed heart becomes necrotic in the absence of lifeblood.

  The dissident performer Carlos Varela had crafted a song declaring Ortega, Cuba’s new revolutionary. It resonated like an anthem on the pirate radio stations of south Florida. Anti-Castro malcontents, who had escaped Cuba in their inner tubes and through other means, pleaded to return to the land where they dreamed to live and die.

  The Washington Post headlined Cuba’s new revolution “Ortega’s Extreme Makeover,” and noted that the US embargo against Cuba seemed as outdated now as the island’s patchwork antiques. “The Denton Administration would be hard pressed to justify the continuation of the embargo,” it declared. “And moreover, now would be a good time to consider rapprochement.”

  Denton admired Pilious Ortega greatly and was banking on his ability to lay the political groundwork necessary to finalize rapprochement.That was the reason for his secret visit. An F-16 had been dispatched to Costa Rica where the Summit of the Americas was about to welcome the new and improved Cuba. Ortega had been spirited from his private villa under cover of darkness, stuffed unceremoniously into the rear seat of the US Navy Tomcat, and flown quicker than sound to Andrews Air Force Base.The Cuban leader was then loaded aboard the President’s personal helicopter for the flight to Camp David. Ortega would return the same way he came, before his absence was noted by delegates, including his own entourage of advisers and functionaries who were presently asleep in their beds if not draining mini-bars or enjoying the local whores.

  Ortega opened his eyes as if waking from a nap. He smiled weakly. “You gave Braithwaite the night off?”

  “He arrives at dawn,”Denton replied. “I thought it best we meet alone.”

  “Pity,” Ortega replied. “I was hoping to say hello.Maybe play a hand.”

  “I’msure he’d appreciate that.”Denton laughed, easily recalling that night a lifetime ago. The three of them full of Jack Daniels. Braithwaite’s shitty cards. Ortega got lucky on the pot. Incredibly, pairs of aces and queens. Braithwaite vowed revenge and didn’t speak to Ortega for amonth.

  “Poor loser,” Denton said.

  “Poor bluff,” Ortega added.

  Bothmen laughed.

  Denton felt good to be in the company of his old friend. Somany years had passed since they had run into Ortega on that first night. Holding court outside that beer hang out, explaining the broader strokes of Fidel’s revolution.There’d been half a dozen beauties who seemed hypnotized by the lanky dark Cuban with his sea-green eyes. Denton and Braithwaite had also been drawn intoOrtega’s orbit.They listened until the drunken Braithwaite could take it nomore. “Man’s bullshit seems to be working,” he had barked.

  The Cuban had smiled benevolently, which seemed to make Braithwaite only angrier.

  “Che Guevara wannabe,” Braithwaite yapped.

  It was Braithwaite’s strategy to club good-looking adversaries with his intellect andwit, especially when they were waist deep in the kind of women Braithwaite could only dream about.

  Braithwaite—blurry eyed—pulled himself straight. “Your man Fidel’s a socialist fraud,” he slurred.

  Ortega went quiet. Departing his female audience, he walked slowly towards Braithwaite, a look of handsome confidence bathed in soft neon light.The women parted in a fashion that seemed almost biblical to Denton at the time, wordless apostles yielding to their prophet.

  Ortega stopped within inches of a smirking Braithwaite.
“Tell me how Prime Minister Castro has committed this fraud. I’m very interested in this. The Cuban people would be very interested in this, also. How, in defeating the treacherous bourgeoisie, has he perpetrated such a crime?”Ortega looked smugly at his adoring fans.

  Braithwaite was at a vertical disadvantage, a full six inches shorter than the Cuban, so he stepped back to lessen the angle at which he was compelled to stare up at Ortega’s face. “Man rammed communism down your fool throats. It’s not what he was selling when…,” Braithwaite burped, “when he landed aboard Grandma with his ragtag rebels.”

  “Granma”

  “What?”

  “The boat. Granma, not grandma.”

  Braithwaite smiled despite himself. “Yeah. Granma. Stem to stern yellow and purple daisies.Willy Wonka in the wheelhouse.The Lolly Pop gang. Fidel the heart, Che the brains, Raul the fist. All aboard for our little socialist cruise to Cuba. Only they weren’t really socialists.”

  Denton flushed with embarrassment.What in God’s name was his saying?

  Braithwaite forged ahead. “The guerrilla struggle.The vanguard. The motor force. Generator of revolutionary consciousness and militant enthusss…enthusiasm.”

  Denton wisely took hold of Braithwaite’s sleeve. Gave Ortega an apologetic glance.

  Braithwaite jerked away. “Guevara.That communist executioner bastard liked to write that shit. Wudda been just a bum and a womanizer except he throws in with Fidel and his little brother in Mexico City.Whaddya think of that, girls?”

  The women in Ortega’s party were too stunned to react. Eyes flashed beneath a blur of ringlets.Then they pranced off without a backward glance.