by Bob Mayer
“I wasn’t scheduled to do a coordination for two weeks,” she said. “But given that Jonah and Zarah have disappeared, the others would understand if we deviate from our schedule.”
Aaron nodded. “I think we need you in position in DC.”
“I’ll leave in a few hours,” Baths said.
“And Philadelphia?” Caleb asked. “Should we see what’s happening there?”
Aaron shook his head. “The Philosophers will reconstitute. They’ll reach out to us.”
“And meanwhile?”
“Only the oldest get to go topside,” Aaron said. “We can’t take any more chances. Our enemies are getting closer than they’ve been in a very long time.”
“I can still send operatives after Jonah,” Caleb said.
“It’s too late,” Aaron said. “And we’re short two now. And any acolyte would have to be vetted extensively. We must focus on our primary mission.”
Caleb remained silent, signaling his agreement.
Aaron stared off into the distance, lost in thought. “Perhaps it is all as it should be. We must let fate play out its hand now.”
Caleb was surprised. “We control fate. We always have. We’ve kept the peace.”
Aaron regained his focus. “Yes. Yes. We have. I’m sorry. Sometimes my old age makes me tired.” He stood up. “But we must be prepared. If Jonah talks and gives up what he knows, there will be repercussions.”
“Should we let the others know?” Caleb asked.
“No need to alarm them unnecessarily,” Aaron said. “Jonah was unstable. It’s more than likely he’ll end up in a Turkish prison or worse.”
“Agreed.” But this time Caleb didn’t stay silent. “If Jonah was talking about Penkovsky, who knows what he’s up to? And if the Cincinnatians struck out against the Philosophers, they’ll be coming for us.”
“They’ll always be coming,” Aaron said. “But we keep the peace.”
“We keep the peace,” Baths echoed.
Aaron checked his watch. “Shift has changed. I’m going to check on things.”
He walked out of the room, an old wooden door swinging shut behind him.
Baths looked down at the body. “A shame.”
“A necessity,” Caleb said.
“You are third,” Baths said. “When you take command, I won’t have to worry about it.”
“No,” Caleb assured her, “you won’t.”
“I need to prepare to leave.”
“Safe journey,” Caleb said.
Baths left, leaving Caleb alone with the corpse. Slowly he stripped off his blood-soaked clothes, tossing them on top of her, until he was completely naked. His body, like his head, was hairless. The shaving was a ritual he did every other day. He was muscular and defined, a result of an intensive workout regime. A former Marine, he was versed in martial arts and an expert with weapons. He had his own firing range alongside one of the abandoned tunnels, where the Peacekepers could fire unheard and unnoticed as a train rattled by a few feet away.
He went to a shelf and took a headlamp off a peg next to it, looped it over his skull and turned it on. He grabbed a pair of surgical gloves from a box and pulled them on.
He picked Zarah up and easily tossed her over his shoulder. He went to a corner of the room. There was another old wooden door, which he pulled open. The door was be old, dating back to when this place was first built at the beginning of the 20th century, but the hinges were well oiled and made no noise.
He entered the darkness. Naked but for the lamp, mask and gloves, he stepped into the tunnel, shutting the door behind him. He began walking, a route he’d done too many times. Unlike those who might notch their gun or their knife handle, Caleb kept no record of his kills. It was as much a part of his job as shaving, something to be done, but not noted.
Like a cunning rat at home in a maze he wove his way almost a quarter of a mile underneath Manhattan until he came to his destination. The roar of powerful engines thrummed through the concrete all around him. He put the body down. He hung the headlamp on a pipe so it lit up a rusty door. He opened the door.
He picked Zarah back up and put her over his shoulder. The space he was entering reeked of raw sewage. He walked across the freezing concrete floor in his bare feet until he came up to an eight-foot wide river of sewage running in a culvert eight feet deep. Without ceremony, he tossed Zarah in the thick, dark sludge. He waited, making sure she was going with the slow flow to the left.
Where powerful blades, as wide and deep as the culvert, were spinning at a steady pace, cutting apart anything larger than two inches that came in with the sewage. He watched the body reach the fans and be torn apart, disappearing to the other side in pieces so small they would easily be further rendered in the treatment plant at the end of the river of sewage.
Caleb headed back the way he’d come, except for a slight detour, a spot where a crack in a water main spilled a steady stream of fresh water. He stood underneath ice-cold water, washing off the blood, dirt and sewage.
He felt purified when he was clean.
*****
As Caleb performed his routine, Aaron walked down another corridor as he had every day for half a century. Fourteen paces. Then he turned left. He reached up and placed his right hand on a flat screen to the right side of a steel door.
That had not been part of security when this place was built in 1904.
There was a beep, the screen flashed green and then an optical scanner swung down from the ceiling, stopping four feet above the ground. Aaron leaned over and placed his face against it.
Throughout all this, he ignored the man standing in the shadows ten feet to the right, automatic rifle aimed at him, even though the guard had just left the meeting Aaron had presided over. The man’s finger was on the trigger and the weapon was off safe.
That weapon was never placed on safe until it was turned back in to the arms room for servicing.
Aaron’s eyes were scanned, he was now double confirmed, and the door rumbled open to the side. Aaron stepped inside, ignoring the second guard in a bulletproof booth to the right. The woman’s hand was on a dead man’s switch, keeping it depressed. If the woman let go of that switch the room would be flooded with poisonous gas. She would keep her hand on that button for her entire four-hour shift. A bank of screens surrounded her, linked to a camera set for night vision, covering all approaches to the Fortress.
Another steel door was beyond, and even Aaron could not pass through that door unless it was scheduled for inspection. Or they were called to action.
Two more guards were on the other side.
All was as it should be.
“We keep the Peace,” Aaron whispered, as reverently as any priest in front of the cross.
21 April 1961
Four Days after the Bay of Pigs failed invasion of Cuba
President John F. Kennedy News Conference
“Gentlemen, I have several announcements to make,” Kennedy said. “I know that many of you have further questions about Cuba. I made a statement on that subject yesterday afternoon. We are continuing consultations with other American republics. Active efforts are being made by ourselves and others on behalf of various individuals, including any Americans who may be in danger. I do not think that any useful national purpose would be served by my going into the Cuban question this morning. I prefer to let my statement of yesterday suffice for the present.
“I am pleased to announce that the United States has offered concrete support to a broad scale attack by the United Nation upon world hunger. I have . . .”
Mary Meyer watched her friend, the President, labor through his 10th news conference, trying to cover topics no one had any interest in this morning. Broadcast live, it was being followed by many.
“They’re going to eat him alive,” Timothy Leary remarked from the armchair where he was smoking a joint. Meyer ignored him. Leary was passing through town and she was letting him stay the night. This week she wasn’t in the mood for h
is drugs or his observations given what was happening in DC since the failed invasion of Cuba.
Meyer had known the President since his Senate days in 1954 when he and Jackie bought a house nearby in Georgetown. With the death of her middle son in ’56, and her divorce from ex-CIA agent Cord Meyer in ’58, Meyer’s life had been a rollercoaster; one she didn’t see smoothing out any time soon. Not that she had any particular desire to. She was having a good time and enjoyed being in the swirl of Washington intrigue and politics.
Most of the time.
“Asshole,” she muttered as a reporter ignored the President’s request:
“Mister President, this is not a question about Cuba, it’s a question about Castro.”
The rest of the reporters in the room laughed and Kennedy twitched out a smile.
Leary laughed, too. “He’s not going to escape.”
Kennedy blew off the direction of the query and redirected it to the Saturn space program. He kept trying to avoid the elephant in the room and the reporters kept shining a spotlight on it.
Finally Kennedy squared up his shoulders as another question, never mentioning Cuba or Castro, still was directed at the Bay of Pigs.
“Well, I think in answer to your question that I have to make a judgment as to how much we can usefully say that would aid the interest of the United States,” Kennedy said. “One of the problems of a free society, a problem not met by a dictatorship, is this problem of information. A good deal has been printed in the paper.
“There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” Kennedy spoke a little longer, then he took on the burden of his office. “I am the responsible officer of the government.”
“Ballsy,” Leary granted. “They can’t pile on when you’ve already thrown yourself under the bus.”
“Oh, they can do much worse,” Meyer muttered. “Much, much worse. You don’t know this town, Tim.”
“By the time of the next election no one will even remember,” Leary said.
Meyer shook her head at both his comment and as a new question drove the conference to other topics, including a country called Vietnam, which practically no one had ever heard of. Meyer walked over and turned the volume down.
“Of course, they might impeach him,” Leary said, rolling another joint on her coffee table, trying, as he usually did, to see the other side, thus not taking a stand at all. A technique Meyer saw through, but was always amazed her old friend didn’t understand about himself.
“They won’t,” Meyer said.
Leary looked up. “How do you know? You act like you know everything.”
“I know.”
“Ah, the old girl, or should I say young girl network. Who have you been chummy with?”
“I was married to a high ranking CIA officer,” Meyer hedged, knowing there were things she could never tell such an unreliable person as Leary. “DC is a complex town. The people who really pull the strings stay out of the limelight.” She shook her head. “The President was misled. Mostly by the CIA, but also the military. Bad advice. For him. Good advice for others.”
“Are you giving him good advice?” Leary asked, an emphasis on the last word.
“You can leave now,” Meyer said, her tone icy.
Leary paused with the joint halfway to his lips. Despite his blind spots, he was enough of a psychologist to understand the finality of a request. He put the roach in his coat pocket, stood up, grabbed his bag and went to the door. “If you’d call me a cab, I’ll wait outside. Until we meet again, my dear.” And then he was gone.
Mary Meyer turned her attention back to the television. “You need help, Jack,” she whispered.
Then she went to the phone.
But not to call a cab for Leary.
*****
“This is getting out of control, Jim,” Meyer said as they walked along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath. It was spring and the trees were budding out and the land was full of new life.
The man walking next to her, James Jesus Angleton, saw enemies everywhere, and he might well be right. Even if one didn’t have enemies, being paranoid and having power was sure to produce some. As one of the founding members of the Central Intelligence Agency and having served in its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, he’d seen first hand the results of double and triple agents plying their trade. He’d also seen just plain stupidity at work. His official title was so long people just used the initials: ADDOCI. Assistant Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence.
It meant he spied on spies…and a lot more.
“How are the children?” Angleton asked, as if her comment was like one of the old leaves left over from the previous fall being stirred about on the ground by the slight breeze. Of little consequence and certainly not worthy of being noticed.
But Meyer knew Angleton well and that his mind worked nonlinear and in compartments: one part focused on a problem deep inside while another dealt with the outside world. Her best friend from Vassar, Cicely d’Autermont, had married Angleton during World War II, and when they were stationed here in the DC area, the families grew tight. Unlike many friends from before divorce, Meyer wasn’t isolated by Angleton after it, even though her ex was a comrade of his in the CIA. If anything, Angleton spent more time with her, coming on weekends to take the boys on outings.
They’d been intimate. Once. But Meyer had been with enough men to know such a thing didn’t sit well with Angleton. It had almost felt like she was being auditioned for some role that had no label. She didn’t feel slighted by the lack of a repeat performance. Also, she understood the strain his marriage with Cicely was under due to his long work hours, and she had no desire to add gasoline to a potential conflagration. But Meyer had also learned something since getting divorced and making the circuit among the powerful men of Washington: being intimate with them gave her a window into them that others didn’t share. She’d had a glimpse into Angleton’s inner world and she knew he would never allow that to happen again.
There were many other men of power in the area she could bed when she desired, whether for carnal or often more enjoyable, informational reasons. And, in a way, she and Angleton had an even more intimate relationship due to their mutual appreciation of literature and poetry.
“They’re fine,” Meyer replied.
“I’d like to take them for a ride on Saturday, if that’s all right with you?”
“Certainly.”
“Good.”
The walked in silence for several more minutes.
“Kennedy is naïve,” Angleton finally said. “He sees the world in black and white. There are no truths, Mary. There are half-truths and half-lies, and we must do the best we can to sort them out. Kennedy needs to learn that.”
“Was the Bay of Pigs a set-up so Kennedy could take the fall?” Meyer asked.
“Oh, no.” Angleton laughed. “Those idiots actually thought they could pull it off. I even asked one of them if he had an escape hatch and he looked at me as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. And I’m afraid he was so naïve, he didn’t.”
“An ‘escape hatch?’”
“A plan in case of failure,” Angleton explained. “Always plan for failure because it’s as likely as success in many cases. They need someone to go to Castro now and say ‘you won. What’s your price?’ To keep things level. But they don’t have anyone. They didn’t plan for it. So it will get worse with Cuba before it gets better.
“Hell, even old Ike told Kennedy that this failure is going to embolden Castro. Lead him to do something he wouldn’t have done before. Khrushchev, and especially the Soviet military high command, now think Kennedy is indecisive. He allowed the Bay of Pigs landing to go, but held back the air and naval support. Like trying to leap over a canyon in two bounds. We’ve got a report from a well-placed source inside the Soviet intelligence apparatus that they think Kennedy is too young, too inexperienced, and strangely enough, too intellige
nt. Apparently they view that as a weakness in a leader.”
“How can I help Jack?”
Angleton paused and turned to face her. He was a gaunt man, his face sharp, and he wore thick, black-framed glasses. He was known at the Agency for his long hours and for being a brutal taskmaster, making those under him work just as long. But, of course, they could never work just as hard. No one there could. The divorce rate for those in Angleton’s division was a running, if dark, joke among the wives. The assignment was a plum one, looked great in the resume for advancement in the ranks of the CIA, but no so great for the family.
“It’s ‘Jack’ now, is it?”
“It’s always been Jack. You know that.”
“Yes, but he’s President now.” He peered at her through his thick lenses. “I’ve called him ‘Mister President’ ever since he was elected.”
“I call him that in public,” Meyer protested, “but this is just the two of us, Jim.”
“Yes. And what do you call him in private?”
“I haven’t seen him alone since the election.”
“Why not?”
“I think he’s been a bit busy.”
“No one is too busy for you,” Angleton said.
Meyer crossed her arms across her chest. “You’ve been.”
“No. I’m here. I see you almost every week. I think Jack could use your support, Mary.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “This is his private line in the Oval Office. Give him a call. Get closer to him.”
“What’s your scheme, Jim? You always have one.”
“I’d prefer the President not see things in black and white, and I think you can help him with that. You’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met, but not the most discreet. My not being with you again had to do with that, nothing to do with you. I’ve got enemies everywhere looking for any way to take me down. A man in my position can never have anything that can be used as leverage against him.”
Angleton sighed. “I had nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs. I smelled the stench from the very beginning. Jack has more to worry about than just Cuba, although I have a sense that’s going to turn into a huge problem. But old Khrushchev and his generals have their sights set on Berlin. Ever since the Airlift, they’ve been itching to have another go at it. The cards are stacked differently than they were back in ’48. Berlin is a thorn in the Soviet Bloc’s side.”
