Shift: A Novel

by Tim Kring

  Melchior flicked a picture of President Kennedy shaking hands with Martin Luther King on the cover of his paper.

  “I think both of these men would disagree.”

  Ivelitsch looked at the two beaming faces as if he couldn’t tell them apart.

  “As a Negro, Reverend King leads the only American manifestation of a phenomenon so common in the old world, namely, the remarkable tenacity of ethnic groups to resist integration into the modern heterogeneous state. His idealism is tribal, which makes it resistant to compromise, but also confines it to his own constituency. The last I checked, Negroes made up about ten percent of the U.S. population, which is a number that means more to retailers than pollsters. President Kennedy, by contrast, wants to have it both ways. His optimism is ridiculously naive—ridiculously American, one wants to say—but his cynicism is Irish to the core. He’s trying to appease everyone—the hawks and the doves, the businessmen and the beatniks, the New Men and the Negroes. In the end it’s going to be the death of him.”

  Something about Ivelitsch’s use of the word “death” suggested it wasn’t a euphemism.

  “Lemme guess,” Melchior said. “The mob. Johnny Roselli? Jimmy Hoffa? Sam Giancana maybe? Pissed off that Bobby isn’t giving them quid pro quo for Cuba?”

  Melchior’s tone was joking, but Ivelitsch responded to it seriously. “Have you heard anything specific?”

  “Let’s just say that if you want to get away with knocking off the president of the United States, you probably shouldn’t go around telling everyone that that’s what you intend to do. Have you heard anything?”

  Ivelitsch shrugged. “Mafia men dislike Communists even more than they dislike Kennedys. But if and when it happens, we need to be ready to take advantage of the chaos that will surely follow. Until then, there’s the question of Orpheus, and, of course, the bomb. We need to get the former out of the country, the latter in.”

  Melchior could only shake his head at Ivelitsch’s candor. The man was working as hard as possible to prove his break from his employer. Either that or he planned on shooting Melchior as soon as he found out what he wanted to know. Of course, Melchior was considering the same thing, assuming he could get Ivelitsch to stop talking about U.S. politics and tell him where the hell Naz was, or what he wanted for her return.

  “So,” he said, moving the conversation in that direction. “Where do you propose we move Orpheus? With Miss Haverman?”

  “Is that her name?” Ivelitsch said. “A lovely girl. Beguiling, I have to say. I can see why she’d have such a hold on Orpheus.”

  “How much do you know about that?”

  “Rather less than you, I think,” Ivelitsch said. “Edward Logan’s records on Project Orpheus seem to have disappeared from the Boston office. Ditto Joe Scheider’s from Langley.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Melchior said.

  “I didn’t think so,” Ivelitsch said, smiling wryly. “At any rate, Miss Haverman is enjoying the comforts of one of the luxury suites in the basement of the Soviet Embassy for the time being. As for Orpheus, I think he’d be better off in the Soviet Union.”

  Melchior snorted. “Putting aside the fact that that is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, I thought you were leaving KGB?”

  “Why would I do something like that? KGB has access to the kind of money and manpower you and I could never raise, at least in the short term. And unlike you, I’ve been nothing but a model citizen my entire career. My superiors have no reason to suspect me.”

  “If only they could hear this conversation,” Melchior said. “All right then. Orpheus to Russia. And the bomb?”

  “We haven’t found it yet, but you have to realize that it’s only a matter of time. It’s leaking—badly. A dozen people have already fallen ill. It’s a trail of human bread crumbs. You need to tell me where it is so I can send someone to fix it before the Cubans or my team find it or, even worse, it’s no longer good for anything.”

  “And then you look the other way while I move it again?”

  “We move it here.”

  “Here …?”

  “To the States. We can bring it in through the Keys or New Orleans or even Houston.”

  “And then what? We blow up the White House? The Empire State Building?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Melchior. You can only blow up a bomb once. But you can threaten to blow it up forever, or at least until people no longer believe you, at which point you can always sell it.”

  “Or actually blow it up.”

  Ivelitsch smiled. “Or actually blow it up.”

  Melchior shook his head. “I don’t know if you’re crazy or insane.”

  “Those words mean the same thing.”

  “And you’d have to be crazy insane if you think I’m going to tell you where either Orpheus or the bomb is. But in any case, we’re going to have to settle this question another day. We got company.”

  “I love it when you go working class. It’s almost as charming as your autodidacticism. I assume you mean the gentleman at two o’clock. Navy pinstripe, rep tie.”

  “Andover. Nice catch. But I was actually referring to your man. Seven o’clock. Gray suit, poorly fitted.”

  “Sartorial socialism at its finest. What gave him away?”

  “He’s doing the crossword and he keeps saying ‘Blyat’ under his breath. Russian for ‘whore,’ as I recall.”

  “Well, that’s a good enough reason to kill him, I suppose, although he also has a habit of singing ‘The Internationale’ at three in the morning after he’s polished off his nightly bottle of vodka.”

  “I’d practically be doing you a favor.” Melchior’s chuckle faded into the vast open space of the waiting room. “We have to kill them, don’t we?”

  “For my sake, no. KGB knows of the work you did for Raúl, so it was easy enough to convince my superiors that I was meeting you to see if I could turn you. But you’re already under suspicion, and if word gets back to Langley that you spent a half hour chatting with a top Soviet operative—”

  “You flatter yourself.”

  “—it will look bad. Angleton already suspects you’re working for the Castros, and Drew Everton can’t be too happy about the fact that you apparently killed Orpheus rather than recovering him, and then there’s poor Rip. At some point they’re going to call you in for a meeting, and you’ll be lucky if you get out before Kennedy loses the election next year.”

  “You know more about my career than I do. Okay then. How do you want to play this?”

  “Attempt to take me into custody. The commotion will bring Ivan into the fray, during which I’ll escape and Ivan, alas, will die. I’ll go for rep tie, but if I fail, he’ll at least report that you attempted to apprehend me.”

  “So you’re saying I have to kill Ivan solely on the chance that you miss Andover? You’re a cold-blooded bastard.”

  “Remember the bad singing.”

  “Andover won’t be alone. Not after Rip.”

  “Have you made his partner?”

  “Not yet, but he’ll make a move during the fight. Keep your eyes peeled. Oh, and—”

  “Yes?”

  “This one’s for Song.”

  Melchior drove his elbow into the side of Ivelitsch’s face. He wanted to surprise him to make it look real, in case the watchers did get away, and he also wanted to let him know who was going to run this partnership, should it survive its first test. There was a snap—probably not a broken jawbone, but maybe—and Ivelitsch rolled to the left. The two men fell to the floor, briefly out of sight of the KGB and CIA agents.

  “We’ve got to switch guns,” Melchior hissed.

  Ivelitsch had to pop his jaw before he could speak. “What?”

  “Forensics needs to find Makarov slugs in both Americans.”

  “Good point,” Ivelitsch said. He swapped guns with Melchior, but before he got up he grabbed Melchior’s arm.

  “For this to work everyone who knows you has to die. Frank
Wisdom and Drew Everton and—”

  “I understand.”

  “Everyone,” Ivelitsch said. And then: “Say it.”

  “Say—”

  “You know.”

  Melchior rolled his eyes.

  “Timor mortis exultat me.”

  “If I were a girl I’d kiss you,” Ivelitsch said. “But since I’m a man …” He smashed his forehead into Melchior’s nose.

  The Russian was up first, the magnum he’d taken from Melchior already level. A woman screamed before he fired the first shot, which only missed Melchior because he rolled behind the bench. He knew Ivelitsch would shoot him if he got the chance. This was a test, for both of them, and it was pass or die.

  As Ivelitsch had predicted, Ivan was in motion. The second KGB man didn’t seem to realize that the two fighting men were aligning themselves so that—

  Ivelitsch aimed, and Melchior threw himself to the floor. He heard the shots, turned to see Ivan falling backward with two dark holes in his chest, a last silent “Blyat!” passing his lips. Melchior jumped up a few yards to the right of his former position, gun already aimed. He could have sworn his shot grazed Ivelitsch’s back. It caught Andover in the meat of his left shoulder. He staggered backward, but he was also reaching into his jacket for his weapon.

  Melchior took a second to aim. If he missed, if Andover got away, it was all over before it began. His second shot blew the fedora off what was left of the agent’s skull, but Melchior was already scanning the crowd before the hat hit the ground.

  He saw what he was looking for halfway down the station: a man moving quickly but calmly amid the frenzied crowd, heading for the front exit. Something flashed in the man’s hand. Not a gun. Worse—car keys.

  “Mashina?” he called out.

  “Nyet,” Ivelitsch yelled back, still squeezing off shots as he made his way toward the gates, where, presumably, he’d hop a train as it pulled out of the station or escape through the tracks. The Russian was making this a little too real. Melchior had to duck and zigzag his way across the waiting room, all of which let the second Company man get farther away. When he’d finally put enough people between himself and Ivelitsch’s gun, he stood up straight and ran for the front exit. The Company man was already outside. Melchior spotted him getting into the driver’s seat of a taxi parked in the rank of livery vehicles on Massachusetts Avenue.

  There were two tickets under the windshield wiper of Song’s bathtub Porsche. Melchior would’ve preferred a Catalina or a Fury or even a Corvette, but Song had assured him the 356 would get him where he needed to go. He’d had to leave the top down because the car was too damn small for him otherwise. He vaulted the door, slid his legs under the steering wheel, jerked the choke, pumped the gas, turned the key. The Porsche whined like a half-grown lion cub.

  The agent didn’t seem to have seen Melchior leave the station. He pulled his taxi onto the semicircular road that would give him access to Columbus Circle and a half dozen streets. Melchior pulled into the one-way drive’s exit to cut him off, weaving in and out of the heavy afternoon traffic. The agent spotted him and jerked the taxi over the curb, tearing across the strip of park that separated the station’s access road from Columbus Circle. He barely slowed as he shot across eight lanes of traffic, heading straight for Delaware Avenue.

  Melchior was acutely conscious of how tiny the Porsche was as he followed—not just because his left knee slammed into the underside of the console every time he shifted, but because all he could see were the enormous grilles of Fords and Chryslers and Chevies closing in on him like a pack of Saint Bernards. He shot onto Delaware, straight toward the Capitol, less than a hundred feet behind the bright yellow Crown Vic. At that point Melchior had to give the little car its due. He punched it and it sprang after the taxi as though a leash had snapped from its collar.

  Melchior sent a couple of shots through the taxi’s rear windshield. Glass exploded into the air, and he had to duck behind the twelve-inch-high windscreen of his own vehicle as the flak sliced into his car. The taxi fishtailed wildly, then straightened out. The agent slammed on the brakes, and Melchior had to jerk the wheel to the left to avoid slamming into the taxi’s trunk. The agent squeezed off a shot over Melchior’s windscreen even as he jerked the taxi to the right and veered onto Constitution—toward Federal Triangle if he continued straight on, or, even worse, the White House if he turned onto Pennsylvania. There were still no sirens behind them, but it was hard to imagine anything less than a flotilla of armed vehicles if two cars shot past 1600 firing at each other. Melchior had to end this now.

  He screeched onto Constitution, narrowly avoiding a panel truck. Again he floored it; again the roadster responded. There were a dozen car lengths between him and the Crown Vic, then there were six. Three. As they flew across Third Street, Melchior pulled up on the taxi’s left flank. The agent was cranking the wheel with both hands to make the turn onto Pennsylvania. Melchior put a shot in the man’s ear and when the agent released the wheel, the car skidded, hit a curb, then turned ass over nose onto the road, crushing the cabin beneath the chassis. If the agent wasn’t dead before the car flipped, he was dead after.

  Melchior looked forward—just in time to see a truck cross perpendicularly in front of him. He was going sixty miles an hour. There was no missing it. He threw himself onto the passenger’s seat. The 356 shook and glass exploded all over his back as the car’s nose went under the bed of the truck and the windscreen was ripped off its struts. There was a moment of vibrating darkness and then, somehow, Melchior was through. He’d gone right under the truck.

  He sat up, shaking glass out of his hair, then jammed the car onto Fourth Street. Still no cops—God bless America. Two cars exchanging shots a quarter mile from the White House, and not a police cruiser in sight. President Kennedy needed better security.

  He ditched the car in a garage Song had told him about “just in case,” then turned the Wiz’s battered Chevy toward Langley. He’d just shot two Company agents. It was time to turn himself in.

  New York, NY

  November 19, 1963

  “Once I destroyed a man’s idea of himself to save him.”

  “Beg pardon, sir?” The Negro elevator operator seemed anything but interested in what the curiously dressed white man had to say.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” BC said. Then, thinking he’d better try out some beatnik jargon: “Just some jive by this cool cat of a poet someone turned me on to, Frank O’Hara.”

  Without doing anything more than lifting one eyebrow, the elevator operator managed to convey the idea that if the man in the car was what lay in store for the beneficiaries of Civil Rights, he’d just as soon remain a second-class citizen.

  “I’m sure I don’t understand, sir.” He stopped the car and pulled open the polished wooden door. “Fifteenth floor, sir.”

  BC had been able to track down Richard Alpert at the home of Peggy Hitchcock—sister of William, owner of the Millbrook estate. He insisted on going alone. Chandler didn’t put up much of a fight, which didn’t really surprise BC. He’d noticed that being around people made his charge visibly uncomfortable. No doubt part of this had to do with the fact that Chandler had become different from everyone around him, but BC suspected Chandler’d been a loner even before his transformation. He said he was more than happy to sit in the hotel and watch television. “That new guy on The Tonight Show. Carson. He’s no Jack Paar, but I like it when he puts on the turban.” He paused. “Are you going to bring your gun?”

  BC just looked at him drolly. “Guns are so uncool, man.”

  There was a mirror just outside the elevator, and BC took a moment to inspect himself. To remind himself who he was supposed to be. He’d done rather well, if he said so himself: black turtleneck covered by a long vest in some peasant-looking striped fabric, paint-spattered chinos and battered work boots, all courtesy of a Village thrift store. The coup de grâce, though, was a dark wig that fell almost to his shoulders. It could have come rig
ht off the head of Maynard G. Krebs. A suede headband held it in place and gave BC a bit of a Comanche look besides.

  To further solidify his performance, he’d spent the afternoon in a dusty bookstore reeking of marijuana smoke, culling bons mots from the likes of Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The only one he remembered, though, was the line from O’Hara’s poem (entitled simply “Poem,” as if to justify its presence on the same bookshelf as Shakespeare, Milton, and Donne): “Once I destroyed a man’s idea of himself to save him.” As BC regarded the unshaven, floppy-haired stranger in the mirror, he felt he understood exactly what the poet meant.

  Hitchcock lived in a sprawling apartment on Park Avenue, a labyrinthine complex of large high-ceilinged rooms stuffed with Asian antiques, African sculptures and textiles, and modernist canvases covered with squiggles and smears and clumps of things BC thought belonged in a trash can rather than on a posh apartment wall. Not that he was able to get a good look at any of them, for, in addition to the expensive objects, Peggy Hitchcock’s home was also stuffed with people. Though it was a Monday night, “the joint was jumping,” as the person who opened the door said to him. Industrialists and beatniks, socialists and hipsters, starlets, jazz musicians, and artists thronged the rooms, crystal tumblers full of gin or vodka or bourbon in one hand, cigarettes of tobacco or cloves or marijuana in the other, and all of them, male and female, white, black, and indeterminate brown, loved BC’s outfit.

  “Nice threads, my man.”

  “Looking fly, white guy.”

  “Way to work it out.”

  BC had never been in an environment where people were so open about their desires. Women in acres of chiffon or inches of polyester stared at him openly, as did more than a few of the men. Normally such overt sexuality would have made him uncomfortable, but the drink that’d been thrust into his hands the moment he walked through the door had calmed him, and he thought he might also be getting something he’d heard referred to as a “contact high” from the layers of sweet smoke in the air. BC used the smoke as his pretext for conversation with various persons, gradually honing his dialogue from “Pardon me, but can I ask where you procured your marijuana cigarette?” to “Any idea where I can score something stronger, dig?” which, after half a dozen tries, finally hit paydirt.