by R.J. Ellory
We didn't speak of them again.
Like it had all been a dream.
And later that same day Nathan turned to me and asked, 'You ever fall in love, Danny?'
I smiled. 'Helluva question, Nate.'
'So?' he prompted, and I leaned back and looked at him, feeling strangely awkward.
Nathan was my closest friend, had always been, ever since that day beside Lake Marion and the baked ham sandwich, but in all that time I could not recall him ever having asked me such a close-to-the-heart question.
Nathan Verney was a rock, an anchor, an island. He appeared distant, uncommunicative perhaps, and yet behind that wall beat a heart so large it could have swallowed the world.
'I've been in love, yes,' I replied.
'Tell me.'
I shrugged my shoulders. 'What's there to tell?'
'How it is, what it feels like, how you know…'
'You're not serious?'
'As I'll ever be,' he said.
And there was something in his eyes, something in his entire being that told me just how serious, that he really wanted an answer to his question.
'I don't understand -' I began.
'I'm here,' he said. 'I've left my home, my folks, everything I've known throughout my life. I'm here because I don't want to die right now… and seeing as how things have been going recently I don't know that I stand a much better chance down here than I would in some godforsaken jungle in the middle of nowhere. I've been thinking about what makes a life matter, about important things, things like family and friends and having something to believe in. I've thought about faith and God, all the things my father told me as I was growing up… and I can't say that any of them are as important as loving someone, being loved by someone, and knowing that whatever might happen you'll always be there for one another…'
Nathan Verney turned and looked at me.
I believed, just for a second, that there were tears in his eyes.
'When I die, Daniel… when I die I want to be able to say that I loved someone…'
I was quiet for a time, and then I started to speak, and words came from my mouth that I never knew I possessed.
'There was Caroline,' I said. 'You remember Caroline Lanafeuille?'
Nathan smiled and nodded.
'I loved her as much as I imagined anyone could love anyone. She was my first, the very first one, and there was something truly amazing about how she made me feel.'
Nathan shifted his weight from one leg to the other and watched me intently.
'She made me feel strong… strong and passionate. She'd laugh at things I said, not because they were stupid, you know? But because they actually just made her laugh. She stood close to me, just stood close sometimes and said nothing, and the way she did that made me feel like the most important person in the world.'
I paused for a moment, and saw that Nathan had never felt such a thing.
'And then there was Linny Goldbourne… and Linny was like a firework, a mad firework going off inside your head.'
I smiled. I laughed.
'She would rush at you with everything she had and there was something about her that made you feel as though nothing else in the world mattered while she was around. She made me feel loved, a different way than Caroline… not better, just different. I loved Caroline, but I don't believe she loved me the same. But with Linny that love came back threefold, almost overwhelming in some way, and it was addictive… like a drug.'
I hesitated, and in hesitating I realized I was talking of things I no longer felt. For a moment a strange sense of panic overtook me, of loneliness, a fear that having felt that way twice in my life would be all I would ever receive. I believed - just for a second - that I would never have the chance to love like that again.
In my throat a fist had swollen and strangled any other words I might have found.
'I want -' Nathan said quietly.
I looked up.
'One day… I want to feel something like that, Danny.'
In that moment I believed that Nathan Verney was more important than anything in the world, more important than anyone… and I couldn't find a single, solitary word to give him.
If I had known how that moment would haunt me later I would have told him anything. But I wasn't to know, and so it did haunt me, followed me like a ghost.
Followed both of us, resolutely, irrevocably, each to our own deaths.
Later he seemed quiet, distant and withdrawn.
'You okay?' I asked him.
He turned, smiled as if in philosophical resignation, and asked me a question.
'What is it that you want, Danny?'
I was a little taken aback. 'Want? How d'you mean?'
'Out of life. What do you want out of your life?'
I shook my head. 'Can't say I've thought a great deal about it.'
Nathan smiled. 'Everyone thinks about it, Danny… about being happy, about what might make them happy.'
'Happiness,' I asked. 'What the hell is that when it's at home?'
Nathan shrugged. 'My father says it's faith… faith is happiness.'
'But he's a minister… of course he's gonna say that.'
Nathan shook his head. 'Didn't mean it like that. Not faith in God or anything, just faith.'
I was puzzled.
'Faith in something,' Nathan went on, as if talking to himself. 'Faith in yourself even. Having such a strong belief in something that it really is the most important thing in your life.'
'I don't know that I have ever really believed in something that strongly,' I said.
Nathan looked at me. 'You believed enough in what we were doing to leave home,' he said.
Believed enough in you, I thought to myself, but didn't say it. Instead I said, 'Yes, I believed enough in that.'
'And what was that?' he asked. 'What was it that we believed in?'
'Life?' I asked, rhetorically almost.
'Maybe,' Nathan replied.
He was quiet for a moment.
'But only our own,' he added after a while. 'Believed only in our own lives, not the lives of others.'
'I don't get you.'
'What about my folks, what about your ma… what do they think about this?'
'They think we've gone to find work.'
Nathan shook his head. 'You're kidding yourself, Danny. They know why we left. They know exactly why we left.'
'You figure?' 'I figure.'
'Well, if they know that we haven't gone north then I don't know what they think.'
Nathan turned, closed his eyes for a second. 'They think that we have betrayed them, betrayed our country… and they have lost their faith in us.'
I didn't know what to say.
'And therefore we have taken away their happiness.'
'But they would be more unhappy if we'd gone out there and been killed,' I said.
'Would they?'
'Of course they would,' I retorted.
'You're sure?'
I didn't reply. Nathan was unnerving me. Guilt was invading my thoughts.
'People get over losing their friends, their family,' he said. 'Somehow they always recover. And it's never the things that people have done that they regret, it's only the things they haven't done. I know my father will think of all the things he never said to me, all the times he could have asked me what I felt about the war, about being an American, about serving my country, and he will tear himself to pieces over it. If I'd gone, if I'd gone out there and been killed, then at least he would have had time to grieve for me, to convince himself that I had done the right thing. Now he has no such chance. All he knows is that his son didn't face up to his responsibilities. That is something he will never forgive himself for.'
'You really believe that?'
Nathan nodded. 'I do.'
I looked away. I felt such pain inside. I thought of my mother, of how my father might have felt had he been alive.
'So we took away their faith,' Nathan said. 'And that, of all
things, is possibly the worst of all.'
I closed my eyes. I wanted to cry. Not for me, not for
Nathan or Caroline Lanafeuille or Linny Goldbourne, not for my mother.
I wanted to cry for myself.
Because I had no faith.
I recognized later how much Nathan had changed. Where he'd once been almost too considerate he became single- minded and stubborn. Where he'd once possessed the patience of Job he had learned the value of acting quickly, decisively, and taken it to the extreme. Where he'd once allowed that perhaps I had some choice in the direction we'd take, he now treated anything I might have to say merely as a test of his will to execute what he wanted.
And so it was in March of '69 that we were moving again, further east, out towards Panama City and Pensacola.
I did not argue, I had learned already the pointlessness of such a venture, and I allowed Nathan to lead the way. We had some money now, money we had worked for during our months near Apalachee Bay and, at least on a physical level, I was not concerned for our survival and well-being.
Emotionally, spiritually, I was not so sure.
I thought often of my mother. We had been gone seven months, and in all that time the only communication she had received from me was a single letter containing a multiple of lies. This was not how I had treated her before, certainly not how I'd have wished to be treated myself, and though I spoke often with Nathan of contacting her, he remained resolute. We had left. We were not going back. This was final.
I conceded defeat following the third or fourth attempt to resolve this, and it was soon after my concession that he told me we should move on, that we were becoming settled, becoming familiar.
'Too many people know our names,' he said. 'Someone comes down this way looking for us and there are a hundred or more people who know us by name and face.
You forget too quickly, Danny. You forget we're still on the run.'
And though I could have questioned and challenged him I did not.
He had changed, there was something inside of him, something our recent experiences had released, and that something held shadows and dark aspects that I did not wish to test.
Had I known then what would occur I would have left him alone, let him go wherever he wanted to go. I could have stayed, could have remained right where I was, and perhaps enjoyed my freedom right through until the war was over. But Nathan was stronger than me, his personality had always held sway over our relationship, and I was afraid of being alone. Nathan Verney was the one man who knew where I had come from, why I was running, and why I didn't wish to be found. With such a secret it was easier to be with someone who knew - even though that someone might be a little crazy - rather than alone. I believed that then, perhaps still do. But now my belief is tempered with hindsight, and I see all the things I could have done and said that might have changed the outcome. Who knows? I don't, and now I don't care to know. It was what it was, I saw what I saw, and what I believed then is not what I believe now. I have changed more than I could have imagined possible, and part of that change was the result of knowing Nathan Verney, following his lead, trusting him to take care of what we had and to ensure we came to no harm. I trusted him to do that much. If nothing else, I trusted him with that.
So we went. We closed out our apartment, packed what we could carry into shoulder bags, and we moved on. We did not return to say goodbye to anyone. Again that was Nathan's choice. He said people would ask questions, and unless we worked out what we were going to say it would become awkward and complex, and he really couldn't be doing with the hassle. So we would just go. Disappear. For my part, I felt our sudden disappearance would raise suspicion, that someone might think we had drowned, that a report might be filed, and then there would be questions. But I said nothing. Again I said nothing, and I could see from Nathan's expression, could hear in the tone of his voice, that he had made his decision and I either went along with it or left.
And so I went, like a child, like a lamb, and Nathan Verney - a good man, a preacher's son - led us all the way to Hell.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
When I think of the events that appear to have carried me here, I think again of Robert Schembri and the days he spoke to me in August of 1972. I think of a man who wove his threads of conspiracy into the most fantastic and brightly-colored quilt.
I believe I was the sleeper, the fall guy, in some minor conspiracy of my own.
I was no Lee Harvey Oswald, no James Earl Ray, but in the smaller scheme of things I had a part to play and I played it well. I walked into it like a deaf, dumb and blind kid.
Nathan and I used to talk politics, and though we never really either agreed or disagreed on anything specific we did concur that Nixon was dangerous. January 20th 1969 had seen him inaugurated as President of the United States. Finally he had achieved the position he'd been working towards since the early 1940s. We believed that a committed and criminal fraternity of judges and lawyers and international financiers had supported Nixon throughout his political career, but it was Robert Schembri, the man who'd sat and talked to me about Kennedy, who gave me a far greater understanding.
Schembri had spoken to me over three meal periods, always with that same distant look in his eyes, that feeling that I could have been anyone at all, but simultaneously the sense that here I was listening to something valuable enough never to miss a word. Like Schembri himself said: a channel from the gods.
I seem to recall it was a Tuesday, the second day I searched him out in the mess hall at Sumter. Craning my neck across the hundreds of seated men, I saw him at his usual corner table. I took my food and made a beeline for him, sat down, and waited patiently while he arranged his food in neat concentric circles. First the rice, then peas, and finally a neat pile of chicken pieces in the center. When he was done he looked right at me, just for a moment, as if simply to acknowledge I was there, and then he looked down and started talking. Momentarily his speech would slow, his voice become quieter, and not wishing to interrupt his flow I found myself leaning ever closer to hear every word that came from his lips.
'In 1960, the evening before the New Hampshire primary,' Robert Schembri began, 'Frank Sinatra introduced a girl called Judith Exner to John Kennedy. A few weeks after that Mister Sinatra introduced the same girl to Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia boss. This girl continued an affair simultaneously with the most powerful mobster in America and the most powerful political leader in the world. Giancana had been hired by a former FBI and CIA operative called Robert Maheu to form up assassination teams to go after Castro. Maheu told Giancana that wealthy Cuban exiles were behind this thing, that that's where the money would come from, but the money came directly from the CIA. Giancana put his L.A. lieutenant, Johnny Roselli, in charge of the hit squads.
'In 1978, when the House Select Committee questioned him, Roselli said that those teams were trained up for the Kennedy assassination as well. Shortly after his testimony his body was found floating in an oil drum off the Florida coast. Giancana never got a chance to testify. He was shot in Chicago. One point that Roselli made was that the Warren Commission never questioned the possibility that there were more than three shots fired at Kennedy. They listened to the eyewitnesses, the eyewitnesses heard only three shots, and they took that as gospel…'
Schembri looked up at me. 'You payin' attention, kid?'
I nodded a yes.
'Sure as shit hope so… you only get this stuff once, you understand… and we don't get into any kind of question and answer period later, eh?'
I shook my head. Okay.
Schembri nodded, spooned another mound of rice and peas into his mouth and seemed to swallow without chewing.
'Roselli intimated that there were up to three different assassination teams in Dallas that day, and that many more shots were fired, the majority of them with silenced weapons. Reports indicated from inspection of the road around the vehicle, from the bodywork of the vehicle itself, that a great many mo
re than three bullets were aimed at JFK.'
Schembri smiled knowingly, held up his spoon and moved it to emphasize each word he was saying.
'And now there's Nixon. Nixon's presidency was planned meticulously. Military fanatics and industrialists were upset with Kennedy, upset that he didn't go to war with the Soviet Union. The publisher of the Dallas News, a known militant paper, told Kennedy that America needed a man on horseback to lead the nation, that too many people in Texas and the Southwest saw him as riding Caroline's tricycle.'