Firebird_A Spy Story of the 1960's

by Noel Hynd

  She never finished the thought. Less than two seconds after the impact of the first shot from the Trade Winds Motel, a second bullet hit Peggy in the left temple, pierced her skull and fragmented within her head. She was dead by the time her body hit the sand.

  Chapter 55

  That same evening Frank Cooper sat with Lauren Richie at a table for two in the dining room of their motor lodge in Georgia. The motif was Early American, but the ambience was Middle American. They could have been in any of the fifty states. They had finished dinner and lingered over drinks.

  “Look,” Cooper finally said, “you can work all sorts of scenarios in a game like this. Anything involving the CIA and Russians? Well, throw away the rule book.”

  She looked him in the eye. “I like throwing away rule books,” she said.

  At the far end of the nearby bar, a pudgy salesman from a hardware company had had too much to drink. He wore a rumpled brown suit and a two-tone tie. He was embarked on an awkward would-be seduction of either of two teenage girls seated at their own table wearing T-shirts and tight jeans. The man’s voice was so loud that it attracted Cooper and Richie's attention.

  “Think that fat guy will score?” Lauren asked in an amused whisper.

  “No,” Cooper guessed. “Unless he shows a huge bankroll and gets them roaring drunk.”

  He turned back to Lauren. “I've about had it,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Me, too.” They finished their drinks. Cooper left money on the table and stood. Lauren stood up with him. Moments later, they were outside. They were registered to separate rooms to keep the bookkeepers, accountants and gossipy Puritans happy back in New York. But already it was a charade. On this night, they shared his room, which was larger.

  Sometime in the early morning hours between five and six a.m., he came half awake and felt her body intertwined with his. She was tucked under his right arm, breathing gently and evenly. He nuzzled her. When she responded, they made love again. Then when they awoke together shortly after eight a.m., he pushed away the sheets that covered them. As daylight flowed into the room, he saw her afresh and, in retrospect, he wondered how he had been able to resist her for as long as he had.

  He held his right arm around her waist. He tried to pull it away.

  “I refuse to release you,” Lauren teased.

  “Until when?” he asked.

  “Maybe not for a long time,” she said, shifting positions and facing him. “I rather like the feel of this.”

  “I do, too,” Cooper said.

  He admitted it to himself. Lauren drove him crazy: the presence of her, the sight of her, the touch, the professional rapport, the personal give and take.

  Then some of the old paranoia gripped him again. Everything was so clear that he was stunned that he'd missed it so far! Sure enough. He had just signed his death certificate. He could be on his necrology page in the Eagle within twenty-four hours.

  Lauren worked for Molloy and the CIA, and for that matter so did S.W. Murphy! She was positioned perfectly to watch him, make sure everyone knew how much of the story he was on to. Against his wiser instincts, he dismissed the thoughts.

  Chapter 56

  Misha had departed from Ft. Myers immediately after killing Peggy Hubbell. He was a professional, of course, so he knew how to cover his escape. Rather than rush to an airport, he had driven to Miami where he had become inconspicuous in the crowds around South Beach. Now in Miami, he was at the airport, ready to leave the country. He would arrive soon in the Bahamas where money should have been deposited into his numbered account.

  Today, however, Misha stacked ten dollars in quarters and dimes on the small shelf in the phone booth in Miami. He dialed a number in Texas. A familiar voice answered.

  “This is Misha,” the assassin said in English. “I’ve finished.”

  “Ah!” replied the voice. “Thank god you’ve called! You’re not finished.”

  Misha stiffened. The American voice on the other end of the line explained. For most of the conversation, Misha listened but did not speak. Yes, the voice on the other end said, Fort Myers was supposed to have been Misha’s final assignment, but there was a complication. Those who employed him needed to add one more task to his hit list.

  There was a reporter in New York, the source told Misha, who appeared to be on the trail of certain information. It would damage Soviet interests in many ways if that information ever saw the light of day. The nosy reporter needed a bullet. Maybe two.

  Misha kept his mouth shut. He knew the danger of returning to the crap table one time too many. He had known a man who was a mercenary sniper who had been employed to whack a rebel general in the Congo in 1960. The proposed money had been great, a quarter of a million dollars, and the assignment had been “one last time.” It had been the last time, all right, as a snitch working for the Americans had betrayed him. Three Congolese rebels chopped the sniper to death with machetes in a hotel in Stanleyville two hours after his arrival.

  As the voice from Texas spoke, Misha listened. The money for the murder in Florida had been paid into his Bahamian account. A new weapon would be provided in New York. His employers would do no arm twisting. They knew he wanted to retire peacefully from the world of professional international murder. A man could live pleasantly in the cafes of Buenos Aires, beyond the reach of most foreign police, with a plump bank account.

  On the phone, Misha assessed his situation. He was angry but willing to listen. In his head, his distant past was swirling before him: an impoverished boyhood in a mining town near the Estonian border, a sky that was constantly the color of dirty socks, an adolescence where he had had to fight to survive, much vodka as a teenager and then a war that had brought him honor, respect and a small bit of solvency and personal independence because he knew how to master the sight and trigger mechanism on a Tokarev STV-40.

  They asked, as he knew they would, could he do this final hit?

  To give up a job from a dependable employer would mean to step backward or move out of the loop. As much as Misha might have wished to do so, even a semi-retirement in a ‘cheap’ country took piles of dollars. Who knew when an easy job would ever come his way again?

  He listened and thought for a few more seconds.

  New York wasn’t so bad. He knew an escort service in New York that had some gorgeous Ukrainian girls. That part would be fine. A paid escort would also enable him to move around the city. People were far less suspicious of couples than a single man.

  Misha thought things through to a conclusion.

  “All right,” he said to his contact. “I’ll fly to New York.”

  He had made his decision and would stick to it. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry and resentful. Mentally, he had checked out of the killing business after shooting the woman on the beach. Psychologically, he had already disengaged. He felt as if those who employed him had changed the rules in the middle of the game.

  As a younger man, during his Red Army years, he had been a problem drinker. He had finally given it up when he became a freelance assassin. Tonight, he fell off the wagon, buying a bottle of disgusting American vodka, drinking half of it in his hotel room. Where, he wondered in his stupor, were the wonderful bottles of Kubyana of yesteryear, the ones which brought such warmth during the Cold War, the ones with the great Soviet-era artwork and typography: a red jacketed Cossask on a splendid white horse.

  Holding that lovely equine image, Misha dozed off.

  Chapter 57

  Agnew’s zingers might have been energizing a certain Nixon base, but they weren’t popular among wavering Democrats. But much of Agnew’s public behavior was a smokescreen for what was going on behind the scenes.

  Nixon had received a telephone call from an outside Republican advisor named Henry A. Kissinger. Kissinger informed Nixon that a there was a deal pending between the Johnson administration and the Soviet Union: a bombing halt in return for the Russians dragging Hanoi to a bargaining table in Paris. What w
as needed was for the South Vietnamese government to agree to it.

  The deal would be a coup for the Democrats. With an apparent end to the war in sight, the doddering Humphrey campaign might be salvaged, a potential disaster for Nixon. But Nixon had a back-channel contact to Saigon, where the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, feared that Johnson would sell him out. Nixon’s pipeline was the South Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem whom Nixon had already met secretly in July 1968 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

  If Thieu would stall the talks until after the election, Nixon could reward Thieu with a much better deal than Johnson would foist upon him. So now Nixon needed a conduit to get a message through to President Thieu. Meanwhile, the war continued.

  One day one of Nixon’s advisors asked the former Vice President if he knew a man named Claire Lee Chennault. Chennault was an American aviator who had been a World War Two hero, known for his leadership of the "Flying Tigers" and the Republic of China Air Force.

  “Sure, I knew Claire,” Nixon responded. “He was a hot shot. A genuine show-off. Obnoxious as living hell! I liked him. He was a friend. Why are you asking me? What good is he? He’s been dead for ten goddam years.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the aide answered. “His wife’s alive. She was born in China.”

  “I remember that. I know Anna Chennault. So what? Get to the point.”

  “I think she can arrange things,” said the aide.

  Chapter 58

  Cooper and Lauren arrived by car on the street where the Hubbell family lived. They knew there was trouble when they saw a police cruiser sitting in front of a house. Cooper had ventured across this scenario many times when he had been working the obituaries on the Eagle—usually in the case of a murder or a tragedy. Gawkers and bothersome reporters were being kept from the bereaved family of the victim. He knew he was on the right trail. He knew, because he was sharing it with the opposition.

  He pulled his car to a halt across the street. A single cop, a black female, sat inside the police cruiser. She was reading a magazine. The engine of her car was running. The day was hot, and her car windows were open. She looked up at him as he stepped out. He crossed the street toward her.

  “I'm looking for Twenty-six Coolidge Lane,” Cooper said.

  “Yeah?” she asked. She looked him up and down. “That's number twenty-six right there,” she said, indicating the Hubbell residence. “They expecting you?”

  “Well, no,” Cooper conceded. “Not really.” Cooper looked at the tract house. The shades were drawn. One car was in the driveway, but the garage door was down. The yard was tidy.

  “It's Mrs. Hubbell I'm looking for. Would she be around?”

  “You’re a little late,” the officer said.

  While never taking her eyes off him, the policewoman reached to a newspaper folded on the seat beside her. She handed Cooper a copy of the Fort Myers News-Press. The story of the woman murdered on the beach was the front-page story.

  Cooper stood in the broiling sunshine. He read the account. Not only was the murder a local scandal, but it was also inexplicable. No one had heard anything. But many people had seen Peggy Hubbell suddenly sprawl backward with blood all over her body. Two bullets had hit her. One in the chest and one in the head. What baffled police was this: the caliber of the shots was low. Thirty-two caliber, it appeared, but military issue. The shots appeared to have traveled some distance. They fragmented on impact, making proper ballistics identification difficult. Added to that was the question of what kind of weapon could propel a live round of that caliber for a long distance and do it with accuracy.

  There were no leads. The slain woman was a local housewife and left a husband and a step-daughter. Nowhere did it mention that under another name she had once been a city detective way up north in Baltimore, Maryland.

  “May I keep this?” Cooper asked, indicating the newspaper.

  “Next time buy your own,” the policewoman said. She turned away.

  “Thanks,” Cooper said. “May I go to the door of the Hubbell house?” he asked.

  “What for?”

  “To leave a business card.”

  “No.”

  “You sure? Let me show you the card.”

  He drew a card from his wallet and a fifty-dollar bill with it. She watched him.

  “It’s important,” Cooper said.

  He showed her the card and pushed the fifty dollars into her hand where, presumably, it felt good. “I won’t cause any trouble,” Cooper said. “Honest.”

  She tucked away the money.

  “You can leave a card. No knocking. Not supposed to disturb the family.”

  Cooper wrote his motel phone number on the back of the card. He walked to the door and slipped it into doorframe. Then he retreated.

  “Another bribe?” Lauren asked when Cooper returned to their car.

  “You’re learning how the world works,” he said. “That’s a good thing.”

  “Maybe,” she answered.

  Cooper and Richie went to the beach where someone had shot the former Margaret McCray. They walked the path she must have taken. Cooper studied the houses and motels several hundred yards in the distance. “It must have been from over there that the shot originated,” he said to Lauren.

  She agreed. “There's no other angle, no other point of origin,” she said.

  Presumably, they guessed further, the local police had come to the same conclusion and by now had clumsily obliterated any possible clues.

  A few weird echoes rattled through his mind: memories of snipers in Korea and the series of strange deaths of those linked to the Kennedy assassination. Even more distantly in the back of his mind was the sniper, or snipers, who had murdered President Kennedy.

  Several minutes later, Cooper and Richie found a pay telephone in a diner.

  Lauren called the Eagle in New York. She filed a report updating the investigation of Sam Rothman's shooting. The article kept Murphy happy and brought Eagle readers back into the story. The other New York dailies, the wealthy dull gray one and the cocky tabloids, had already downgraded the story. So by keeping it alive, Cooper and Richie had a mini-scoop that Murphy could break on page two.

  They returned to their motel. There was no call-back from the bereaved widow of Peggy Hubbell. Together, they pondered their next move.

  Chapter 59

  Misha arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York at 6:18 in the evening. He took a taxi to a Manhattan hotel in the West Fifties and registered. Those who employed him had made an advance reservation in his behalf in a fifty-two story tourist trap on Seventh Avenue. The hotel was a big anonymous place where no self-respecting New Yorker would be caught dead.

  Misha used an Argentine passport in the name of Roberto Suarez. He checked into a modest two-room suite. He said he would stay for four or five nights, his departure not yet determined. He deposited cash with the hotel.

  “Any messages for me?” he asked at the desk. There was some checking behind the counter by a well-spoken young man who bore the nameplate Sajit. Sajit found a single envelope. It was manila and five by seven inches. Its contents were thick, covered within by two layers of cardboard. The assassin felt the envelope carefully with his thumb and forefinger. He smiled. The next part of his connection was well in order.

  A female porter carried his single bag and guided him to the elevator. The nametag above her left breast announced her name as Brigitte. She had dark hair, very light brown skin, and a trace of a New York accent.

  Brigitte wore a tight crisp uniform. As Misha followed her into the elevator, down a hallway on the twenty-second floor, and into his room, his thoughts strayed again to services not specifically provided by the hotel. He flirted with the idea of seducing Brigitte after she went off duty. His instincts told him that she would be eagerly adventuresome for a night or two if he flashed a big cob of bills. He had travelled around the world enough to make such quick assessments. But then he decided against it.

/>   Bad idea.

  One of the reasons he stayed in this particular hotel was its liberal approach to morality: if a man brought a presentable call girl back to the place, and as long as she didn't have a day job in that same hotel, the house detectives in the lobby never batted an eyelash. Then again, Misha mused, call girls were not as much fun. There was never any conquest, no corruption. So he was gracious with Brigitte.

  “You've been very helpful,” he said. “And you're also very pretty. Here.”

  He gazed appreciatively upon her. He handed her a ten-dollar bill. She was amazed and flattered, not sure how to react.

  “Money's nothing to me,” he said. “I'm just showing my gratitude.”

  She accepted the extravagant tip with profuse thanks. Then she departed. As soon as she was out of the room, he turned to more serious business.

  He bolted the door from within and opened the manila envelope. In it, he found a handwritten address on East 3rd Street circled in green ink. He read it and burned it in the bathroom sink, washing the ashes down the drain. There were also two thousand dollars in cash and a metal ring with three keys. He knew that two keys were to an apartment. The address was included. The other was to a car. “Good,” he said aloud. He smiled. He turned on the television, perused the room service menu, and ordered dinner.

  Later that evening, shortly before ten p.m., Misha took the Lexington Avenue subway down to Astor Place. He walked to Broadway and turned south. When he came to 3rd Street he found the address that had been written on the paper he had burned. The building was a tenement on a garbage-strewn block. The building had filthy windows and grates on the first two floors. Much of the block comprised of walk-ups in even worse condition.

  He surveyed the block, then worked quickly. In front of the building was a green Ford. The color of the car matched the circular ink within his instructions. He went to the rear of the car and pulled the key ring from his pocket.