by Noel Hynd
“Nope,” Molloy answered, calmly sipping his drink.
“The defector's name was Pavel Lukashenko.”
“News to me,” he said.
“You were at the CIA station in Paris at the time. And you were a Russian guy.”
Molloy sipped his drink again and continued. “Look, there could have been some Russian that I don't remember,” Molloy finally said. “We screened a lot of these clowns. Most would-be defectors have their brain cells out of whack to start with. They're sick. They're temperamental. They're strung out on booze or whores or drugs. They've got a grudge somewhere. Most of the time whatever they have to say is worth less than a pile of dog manure.”
“But in this particular case you personally…”
“Cooper, listen carefully. I was at the embassy in Paris. I was with the CIA station there from August 1963 until May 1966, right? And Stanley Rudawski was assigned there with the Foreign Service for a portion of that time. But I do not remember a Russian named Lukashenko. And I don't know of anyone in God's kingdom on earth named David Charles. Okay?”
“Okay,” Cooper tried next. “Let's pretend there was a Lukashenko.” Cooper spoke as Molloy drained his glass. “And let's say Lukashenko claimed that he could put other defections in order,” Cooper pressed. “Such as Popov. Such as Goleniewski. Maybe many others. And he further said he could provide evidence to a penetration at the upper levels of the Kennedy–Johnson administration. Would that be a funny thing to pretend?”
“Nope. That would be the typical fake bill of goods some two-bit con man was trying to hustle,” said Molloy. “All he’d need is someone stupid to buy it. Someone like you, maybe.”
“My source said Lukashenko wanted to defect. And when David Charles contacted Washington—Ambassador Bohlen returned to Paris immediately. Charles was shipped back to the United States. Lukashenko was returned to Moscow and shot.”
“Tough break for him,” said Molloy. “It’s a nasty business.”
“Then it did happen?”
“If it did, I didn’t know about it.”
“Stanley Rudawski cited you as the source for the latter. He said that you told him that an Aeroflot jet had taken a Soviet diplomat back to Moscow very suddenly. Lukashenko disappeared from their consulate and a potentially invaluable source of intelligence never came to the West. As much as anyone, you were a witness to all that.”
Molloy pondered it for several seconds. “Bullshit,” he said.
“So I'm onto a story, huh?” Cooper asked.
“You have it inside out and twisted around. And it's not the story you think. Nor is it one you should touch. All right?”
“Why shouldn't I touch it?”
Molloy laughed and shook his head. “Popov, Goleniewski, and all those who followed broke more hearts, balls and careers than any case I've ever seen. You’re rattling the wrong skeletons, Cooper. You’ll be happier if stick to your obituaries.”
“Suppose I wasn’t meant to be happy?”
Molloy sighed. “Cooper, listen. Suppose you combined the Central Intelligence Agency with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Molloy said. “Add a dose of paranoia and a heavy pop of lethal repression, you end up with the Soviet Union's security agency, internal and external. The KGB was founded after Stalin in 1954. It inherited its techniques, personnel, and political orientation from the agencies that preceded it. Most of what goes on will never come to light. Many of the agents and controllers from both sides wind up in nut houses or get killed. During the Khrushchev there was a tiny window of openness. Under Uncle Joe Stalin Doctor Zhivago would never have happened. The pendulum swings. Right now, it swings to the beat of the hardliners since the ascension of Leonid Brezhnev and with the appointment last year of Yuri Andropov as the head of the KGB.” Molloy paused. “Now, there are three take-aways from this. Want them?”
“Sure.”
“One, by any standards of decency, we Americans are not as bad as the Russians. Two, the nature of the Russian threat does not change: they hate us and are out to destroy us.”
“What’s three?”
“The bullet to the back of the neck remains an integral part of Russian diplomacy. So if you mess with this case, watch your back, and not because of us. And finally, we ’re finished here, Cooper.” Molloy said. He raised signaled to the bar. “Waiter? We'll take a bill here.”
The check arrived. Molloy unfurled a twenty-dollar bill, gave it to the barman and declined change. Molloy stood. He gave his guest a final nod. “Now go to hell,” he said to Cooper. “And don’t bother me again.” Then he turned and was out of the bar.
At the next table, the man and the woman laughed at some inane joke they'd shared. The waiter served them a check, too, not that they had asked for one. They also left the bar, his arm around her waist. They crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators which ascended to the hotel's rooms. Cooper watched, pondering Russians, Americans, and Paris in the mid-1960. The elevator door closed behind them. They were watching Cooper as it closed.
Later the same day, Cooper’s Metroliner back to New York sped past the gritty rail yards of Baltimore and Wilmington. It continued through Philadelphia's 30th Street Station and past the museum and the university boat houses on the Schuylkill.
The cityscape of the Northeast fascinated Cooper: Majestic old buildings crumbling, factories boarded and broken windowed. Central New Jersey rushed past, accompanied by the steady steel churning of high-speed train wheels. No wonder George Wallace had a following.
When his train arrived in New York, it was shortly after ten. There were several messages waiting on the answering machine in his apartment. Among them, Sam.
“The Bradford woman called again,” Sam said, carrying on a dialogue with Cooper's machine. The message had been time stamped at message at 4:50 p.m. the same day. “She wanted to thank you for the write-up on her dad. She also said you should be careful now that the Firebird genie is out of the bottle. Her words, not mine. She said you had her number.”
The next morning, Sam Rothman was waiting for him. Cooper was sipping black coffee, his jacket off, his feet up on his desk. Sam stood before him in shirtsleeves, sweat already breaking through. “Tell your poor struggling old buddy what the hell is going on.”
“About what?”
“This Firebird thing.” Sam tried. “Look, I got all morning. Tell me.”
Against his better judgment, Cooper brought Sam into the Firebird case.
Chapter 24
Governor Wallace was in northern Wisconsin, surrounded by an array of country music singers who supported his candidacy and put on a fund-raising performance for him. They sold out a muggy auditorium of slightly less than ten thousand seats at five to twenty dollars a pop.
Nixon and Humphrey were alarmed. Wallace was positioned to sweep the states of the Deep South and possibly the entire old Confederacy, all the way out to Oklahoma. Wallace could easily throw the election into the House of Representatives. Worse, tiny margins in a handful of swing states could tip the election.
Playing upon this favorable situation, Wallace obtained a new infusion of cash from some deep pocketed donors in the southwest, ferried to him by a friendly ingratiating bundler named Deke Moreland, a hard-right businessman and longtime fan. With their money in play, plus the monthly kickbacks from people doing business with the state government of Alabama, the two wonderful new television commercials appeared on tv in the key states. The poll numbers continued to climb. It was finally time to add a Vice Presidential candidate to the ticket.
The country boy brain trust began to talk with some enthusiasm about Albert Benjamin “Happy" Chandler, the former baseball commissioner. But Chandler had integrated baseball as commissioner by approving Jackie Robinson’s contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers—an act unforgivable to the Wallace ‘base.”
But then the Wallace advisors spent time in serious prayer and decided that the perfect man, the individual who would lead The Free World if anything unfortunate
should happen to President Wallace, was the tireless Jimmie H. Davis, who had twice been elected governor of Louisiana, first elected in 1944 and again in 1960.
Davis, a sunny and engaging fellow, at least to white folks, was best known in the south for his composing, yodeling and singing career; he was a gospel and country recording star dating back to the 1930’s, noted for writing You are My Sunshine, Nobody’s Sweetheart But Mine, and some raunchier tunes including I’m A Bearcat Momma From Horner’s Corners.
Like Wallace, Davis was an ardent segregationist, sunniness notwithstanding. He was popular among the white citizenry of Louisiana for being the author of a brutal piece of legislation which took pregnant African-American women off relief roles while allowing white women who had “made a mistake” to get public assistance. But Davis had also been rumored to have operated an integrated honky-tonk in California. “It was a place where God-fearing white women got seduced by Africans,” said one piece of contemporary Klan literature. New Orleans newspapermen in the 1940’s also maintained that Davis had allowed the illegal operation of nine thousand slot machines during his times as governor during the 1940s, during which time Davis coincidentally became a wealthy man, nickel by nickel.
The Wallace folks were all set to officially go with Davis until the slot machine and integrated honky-tonk stories started to resurface. Seeking an even better payoff from the voters, the campaign kept Davis in the background while they scoured for someone even more perfect. Meanwhile, the campaign chugged along.
“It is no secret,” wrote Martin Friedkin, his scalp still stained with ink, in the Eagle, “Governor Wallace wants nothing to do with a major party label. Not only would it make him part of the establishment, but it would make him less likely to win. In short, Governor Wallace is as populist as he is racist. He has the American political system by the short hair, tuning in to the nation’s mean and nasty underside. It’s a slick act and it’s playing well to the ignorant masses across America. I used to be in awe of America and what it stood for. But now that I see things close-up, I wonder when this country will awaken and realize that by November this vile individual and overt fascist and racist might be elected President of the United States.”
Chapter 25
The next morning, S.W. Murphy summoned Cooper to the Sixth Floor of the Eagle
Building.
Cooper reported at the designated time. Three obituaries for that day's edition remained open. He waited for several minutes in a waiting room outside Murphy's office, accompanied by the managing editor's office.
Murphy hated desks. He sat at the end of a long circular table, consciously Algonquin style. Murphy was in white shirtsleeves and red suspenders. In a corner behind him there was a squash racket, intended to prove that S.W. was one of the elite guys. It hadn't moved in years.
Murphy appeared a decade older than sixty, which is what he was. He was a veteran of nonunion Siegelman papers in Oklahoma and Florida. He had also worked on the New York Daily News at the same time as Cooper. He had a large, flat nose, a receding fleshy jaw, and a benign expression that frequently misled the uninitiated. Friends—and he had at least half a dozen—called him Steverino after Steve Allen, the tv star. His parents had given him the Christian names Steven William, the same name born by his uncle, who had been a respected editor of children's books in Philadelphia in the 1930’s up until he had been arrested for pedophilia. The case got hushed up and tossed out of court when the victim’s family was paid off. But the original Steven Walker Murphy’s career was ruined.
“Hello, Steve,” Cooper said.
Cooper got away with the first name because they had worked together on the News. The first name usage was grudging, as was Murphy’s allowance of it.
“Ah. You!” said Murphy, looking up. “Come in and sit down,” Murphy said. He leaned back in his leather chair. He folded his hands behind his head. “How are things down in obits, Frank?” he asked.
“People die. We write about it,” Cooper answered. “So we're predictably busy.”
“I'm sure you are. Sending people off with a good literate write-up before burning in the devil's own fire for an eternity. Got anything there today that will make my eyes misty?”
“Six-year-old kid on Grand Concourse got snuffed coming out of temple by a Bronx hummingbird.”
“Bronx hummingbird?”
“A stray bullet.”
“No!”
“Of course not. Why am I here?”
“How are things in your private life?” Murphy tried. “Bedding any wildly exotic women? Confide in me.”
“Well, yes. Three a day.”
“Really?” Murphy’s eyebrows shot toward the ceiling.
“Another joke. Why am I here?”
“Look, I'll get right to the problem, Frank,” Murphy said. “The boss got a visit from the FBI thanks to you. I, in turn, just received a phone call.”
“The big boss? Mr. Siegelman?” “I’m flattered.”
Murphy grunted. “Don’t be,” he said.
From a jacket pocket, Murphy produced a battered pipe. From a side drawer of his desk he pulled a tobacco pouch and flipped it open. He absently searched his pockets until he found a lighter. Finally, stuffing a generous pinch of his specially blended tobacco into the pipe, he lit it and spoke again.
“Apparently, the FBI contacted Mr. Siegelman. Frank, the boss plays golf in Palm Springs with Hoover himself. The Top G-Man. ‘G’ as in Gay if the scurrilous current rumors can be believed, but I digress. Here’s the point. The boss wants you to not screw around with this Rudawski story.”
“I don’t screw around with any story.”
“You are advised to lay off this one.”
“Why?”
“Why?!” snapped Murphy, suddenly furious. “Because your employer said so.”
“Rudawski told me a story with legs,” Cooper said. “I want to stay with it.”
“Still looking for that big story of a lifetime, eh?”
Cooper stiffened in his chair. “Aren’t we always?”
“Find another one.”
“No.”
Murphy paused. A low cloud of smoke rolled across the desk, the aroma midway between burning leaves and tropical punch. The pause lingered.
Then, after a small eternity, “I'll tell you something, Frank,” Murphy oozed. “There have been many many times when I have not been your fan. Like when somebody dies and you write something like that the guy was a real piece of crap. Other times, well, your stuff's okay. Not my cup of tea. I find you amusingly obnoxious, both in print and in person, which, mind you, is not easy. The obnoxious part is easy; the amusing, not as much.” He paused again. “But you have your following. Your department even turns a respectable profit. Usually a death page flies at a loss. But your page gets classified listings because people read your page. And, Heaven knows, you've paid your dues. It continually amazes me that you haven’t yet been shot to death.”
Cooper sat listening. “Gee,” he finally said. “Thanks, Steve.”
“You’re welcome.” Murphy took another drag on his pipe. “Hear me. I don't mind having you on this paper,” Murphy explained. “So, let me articulate this in a genteel tone: For Christ’s fucking sake, don't get your wandering gonads caught in the elevator door over something that doesn't pay, hear me? There aren't that many newspaper positions out there in this city. So don't blow the one you have and don’t create a frigging mess for the rest of us! Okay?”
“Espionage stories don’t pay?” Cooper asked.
“That’s what this is? A spy story of some sort? Well, that would sell a few papers, put a few extra shekels in rich Uncle Kenneth’s coffers, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe.”
“Any other newspapers onto the story?”
“Not that I know of. Yet.”
“Somerset Maugham or James Bond?”
“Dirtier. Maybe more Len Deighton than Ian Fleming. With a touch of Vasyli Blokhin.”
“Who the fu
ck is that?” snapped Murphy.
“Blokhim served as the chief executioner of the NKVD under Stalin. He executed tens of thousands of prisoners by his hand, including about seven thousand Polish prisoners of war during the Katyn Forest in spring 1940. I’d say he’s the most prolific official executioner and mass murderer in recorded world history.”
“I’m surprised I’ve never heard of him,” S.W. mused.
“I’m not,” Cooper said.
“Oh, fuck you, Frank! Scram! Listen, don’t make a fool of yourself. Don’t embarrass me with my boss or the paper with the public. That is all!” He waved dismissively. “Get out!”
Chapter 26
When Cooper returned to his office, he found three telephone messages on his desk. Two pertained to obituaries in that day's edition, but his eyes froze upon the third. Cooper looked up from his desk. Sam was at his door. The notes were in his Midwood High School scrawl.
“You just missed her on the phone,” Sam said. “Ten minutes ago.”
“Margot? You talked to her?”
“Briefly, yes.”
“Where did she call from?” Cooper asked.
“Everything I know is on that message.”
“What does this say?” he asked. He saw a pair of initials—S and F—and an address he didn't recognize in Brooklyn. Then something marked “Unit 012” and the time, “one a.m.”
“She says she needs to meet you,” Sam said “It's urgent. Said she won't be able to call back.” Cooper thought of the three times that morning that he had answered his phone, only to find no caller on the line.
“I don't suppose she left a number?” Cooper asked.
“Hey, I tried for one. But…”
“Yeah. I know. What’s this S and F joint?”
“S and F is a warehouse,” Sam said. “One that's been converted into self-storage units.” Cooper's eyes rose to meet Sam's. Sam continued talking. “She said the front door of S&F will be unlocked at ten minutes before your meeting time. Go to the basement storage area. She will meet you at unit oh-one-two. She said everything that has happened so far will make sense.”
