by David Waters
But I am making one last effort through this letter. I’m trusting that Mary still believes in my innocence. And I think you care about what she thinks. With my death I am hoping to bind you to a pursuit of the truth. It is a burden, I know, but I think that it is one that you have been seeking. You see, Thomas Webster, men who are about to die know and see things that others don’t. Like me I think you tend to be a passive person lacking the ego or maybe the courage to persist when the going gets rough. In my cowardly way I am trying by my death to give you the courage that you probably need. For my sake I hope so. And for yours too.
Harold Hendricks.
I heard the phone ring. Then Gina said that Phil was on his way. I put the letter away in a drawer and went downstairs. Gina had gone outside to await Phil’s arrival. I think she wanted a chance to inspect his equipment. I joined Mary in the living room. I looked at her. “He said you knew about his inflated credentials.”
She nodded.
We stared at each other.
“But you chose not to tell me.”
I saw the pain in her eyes as she nodded again.
“Why?”
“Because he had told me in confidence. It was”, she paused, “like he had gone to confession. There was a lot of hurt in him.”
But I too felt hurt by her refusal to trust me with the information. With a touch of sarcasm I said, “but you’re not bound like a priest by the seal of the confessional.”
She nodded, but in her eyes there was a glimmer of Irish defiance. “True I’m not a priest and I’m not bound by Canon Law.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “But has it ever occurred to you, Thomas, that when people confide their deepest hurts or transgressions to us, in a way we are all priests who are bound to keep that trust. We don’t need Canon Law or Civil Laws to keep faith.”
We stared at each other.
“And what would you and Phil have done with it?” She asked. In a way it was a taunt.
I did not answer because I did not know.
“I truly believed that Harold was innocent, and so too did Frank.” I could sense that she was reaching out to me. “Do you think it would have helped my husband to cast doubt on someone else whom he believed to be innocent? That would only have sent him into a deeper depression. That didn’t warrant breaking the trust that Harold had placed in me in a moment of pain.”
“But what if Hendricks had been guilty?”
“If he had would he have told me? After all he told me after Monaghan was dead and after Frank had been released. He was apologizing for his failure to be supportive when Frank was arrested. I could have gone to the police. He knew that. In a way he was placing any punishment for his failure in my hands. I could not believe Monaghan’s murderer would have done that.”
She was right, of course. A part of me was still a bit miffed at not having been trusted with her secret. But another part of me admired her courage and her capacity to trust. I heard Phil’s van pull up outside with a screech. As I went to the door, Mary said, “Thomas, there’s no reason for others to know, is there?”
“No.” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We had phoned to check where Symansky’s office was located and we were now probably within a few hundred yards from it. I was planning to bring my tape recorder into the office. Iwas anticipating that he would ask instead that we talk off the record. I was then going to put my tape recorder aside, all the while, knowing that Phil and Gina would be taping every word in the van. I had thought of it as a subterfuge designed to lull Symansky into talking more freely. But it was like making a pact with the devil to get at the truth. A lie is a lie is a lie.
Phil moved the van a safe distance away. He attached the microphone to my body, made sure that it was adequately hidden by my jacket, and asked me to walk a few hundred yards away to test both the mike and the recording equipment.
“Works perfect,” Phil said. He was proud of himself.
“It even picked up the sound of your feet crushing the grass,” Gina said clearly impressed by the equipment.
“I’m ready,” I said. We got back into the van and Phil drove me around to the main entrance.
“He only sees people by appointment.” His secretary’s tone reminded me of Gooden’s secretary, but any similarities ended there. Her blond hair was pulled tight to her skull and fastened at the nape of her neck with a gold-plated clip. She was not wearing jeans. And she was probably twenty years older than Gooden’s secretary.
I handed her my card. “Tell him he must see me immediately, that his reputation hangs in the balance. He will understand.” I could see her hesitate. Finally with a shrug she rose, knocked and went into Symansky’s office. I watched the phone on her desk to make sure no outside call was being made.
Symansky came to the door with her. He nodded to me.
“Do you want me to call security?” His secretary asked, emboldened by Symansky’s presence.
“No, it’s okay, Irene.” He nodded to me. “I know Mr. Webster.” He motioned me into his office. I sat in one of the three dark green leather armchairs that had been placed in a semi-circle in front of his desk. I took the one which put the transmitter closest to the window.
“I don’t like being threatened through my secretary,” he said, as he went to sit behind his desk.
“I don’t like being lied to.” I took my portable tape recorder and placed on the corner of his desk.
“I didn’t lie to you.” His tone indicated that he believed what he was saying. But a slight frown appeared. Whether it was caused by the presence of the tape recorder or by his difficulty in trying to remember all the nuances of our previous conversation I do not know.
“You held back key information so that I was misled. We’re past the stage where we can now afford to play with words. My managing editor is sitting on a story out of Washington detailing your covert role at Winston. He’s been sitting on it so far at my request.”
He stared at me.
“What do you want to know that I haven’t told you already?”
I returned his stare.
It was time for me to throw the dice.
“Peter Gooden.” I said. I saw his eyes tense.
I threw the dice again. “Gooden your partner, your friend.” I saw a moment’s hesitation. It gave me confidence. I threw the dice a third time. “Gooden, RCMP informer.” He turned away but before he did I saw his mind spinning like tires in a snow bank.
“We were never friends,” Symansky muttered contemptuously.
And at that moment, I knew I had him. Had he immediately denied any sharing in their roles as informants I might have thought otherwise. But friendship was not the issue. I pressed the record button on the tape recorder. Then I leaned back and stared at him.
His gaze shifted back to me and then back to the window. In profile, he was a handsome man, almost patrician. A man at the peak of his career. I wondered if he was seeing the kind of downward slide that Hendricks had envisioned.
“Put that damn tape recorder away, will you?”
I did not comply immediately.
He waited.
I pressed the stop button.
“What will it take to keep my name and Stella’s out of the newspapers? Or is it already too late for that now?”
I let the question hang in the air as if in the real world we were both sitting on the cusp where options were still possible. He went on, almost as if he were debating with himself. “Of course, there could well be a court trial eventually, but if our names do not emerge until then, it might give me the time I need.”
Time for what? I wondered. I waited until our eyes locked. I wanted him to see my anger.
“I might be able to engineer that,” I said. I knew I had given him a small bone to chew on. But I knew that if I did not keep some of his hopes alive, he might choose to clam up and talk only through his lawyers.
He closed his eyes for a moment, massaging his forehead with a manicured hand which had
begun to show the signs of age. I tried to think of a lever I might use but I could think of none before he made a decision.
“Can we go outside? There’s a park bench. I would feel more comfortable talking out there than in here.”
I hesitated a moment before nodding. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give him the time to prepare a set of answers that might be short of the truth I needed. But a part of me understood his request. His office reflected his power and his image. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to soil it either with the betrayals and sordid details I expected to get from him. Besides, I thought, being outside would probably make it easier for Phil to record our conversation.
“I wanted to explain about Stella,” Symansky said as we headed towards the park bench. “Back then, she was farther to the right than I was. But since we came here, all of that has changed. The feminist movement had a lot to do with it. She’s now involved in work she’s proud of. I could probably adjust to exposure. Go back to work on my book. Whatever. It would be much more difficult for her. For example, she’s been working hard to help bring about an improved medicare system. Something akin to what you have in Canada. Of course it’s a losing cause, but it’s the kind of thing that has given her life a new meaning. She has a network of friends who trust her. All that could be shattered.”
We sat down on the park bench. There were very few people around, but that was not unusual for a college campus at this time of year. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the van about a half a block away and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Let’s start with Gooden and what you knew about him,” I said.
He gave a slight nod of resignation. “First of all I knew that he was a part-time paid informer of the RCMP. Obviously they knew about my role and trusted him enough to tell him about it because he approached me and suggested we work closely together. In fact, I had been inactive for some time. Interest in the Vietnam War and what American expatriates in Canada were doing had died down. I was reactivated because of Monaghan’s involvement with Bull. It was all very strange in a way because Bull was being partially financed by the American Defense Department. They probably knew all that the government needed to know. But inter-agency rivalry is a fact of life in Washington. I presume the Defense Department refused to share what they knew with the CIA. Besides they had different concerns. The Defense Department was interested in his ballistics projects. The CIA was interested in his growing international involvements. At the time they had nobody placed inside his organization. Sicking me onto Monaghan I took as a stop-gap measure.”
“And so Gooden approached you.”
“Yes.”
“And you worked together.”
“At first, we only exchanged a few bits and pieces of information.”
I waited.
Symansky paused and took a deep breath. He seemed to have reached a hurdle he found difficult to cross. “A few weeks before Monaghan was murdered, the relationship between Monaghan and Gooden deteriorated. Or at least Monaghan was no longer sharing any of his thoughts or work with Gooden.”
“But he had been doing so before,” I prompted.
“Gooden had wormed his way into becoming one of Monaghan’s assistants. You have to understand that people like Monaghan like to talk. They have big egos. They like to impress people. And so if Monaghan was beginning to clam up it had to be taken as significant. Either he was becoming suspicious, or he was becoming involved in something that required that he not discuss it.”
“Are you aware that Gooden and Monaghan had a heated argument the day that Monaghan was murdered?”
“Yes. Gooden phoned me. He told me his relationship with Monaghan had finally collapsed.”
“When did he phone you?”
“That same afternoon. He wouldn’t tell me the reason.”
“Do you know that Gooden plagiarized from Monaghan’s work?”
He looked up in surprise. “No.”
“So Gooden phoned you that afternoon. Why?”
Symansky compressed his lips and looked down at his hands. Finally he said, “He wanted to get into Monaghan’s office that night and xerox everything of pertinence. He wanted my help.”
“What kind of help?” I remembered Symansky had told me and Gina at his house that he had been nowhere near the building that evening.
“He knew I had a copier in my office. At first he wanted me to stand guard. Do the copying. But as you know I had an engagement that evening at McGill.”
“So you told me.”
“Yes. And what I told you was the truth. But not all of it. I returned to my office before going to McGill. I met Gooden. I gave him a key to my office so he could access the copier. And then I participated in a minor subterfuge designed to give Gooden at least the semblance of an alibi. You see it was important that suspicion be deflected away from both Gooden and myself should Monaghan conclude the next day that someone had broken into his office.”
“So what did you do?”
“At the back of the building there’s a stairwell with a fire exit. One of those doors that can only be opened from the inside. We waited until the security guard was at his desk near the front door. Then Gooden left. On the way out he spoke to the guard in a way that ensured that someone would remember his leaving the building. Then I let Gooden back in through the fire exit door. He hid out in my office until the coast was clear. I left for McGill also ensuring that the security officer noticed the time of my departure.”
We lapsed into silence.
“How did Gooden break into Monaghan’s office?”
“He had a master key to the building. How he got it I don’t know. I remembered thinking at the time,” he said, a regretful smile playing with the corners of his mouth, “that maybe I should put a special safety lock on my own office! As I told you, I was not his friend and I had no personal reason to trust him. But then I decided it would only draw attention to myself. But from that day on I made sure I kept no incriminating documents there.”
“So what happened that evening when you left Gooden in the building to xerox Monaghan’s files? Did Monaghan catch him doing it? And was he murdered as a result?”
Symansky did not reply immediately. Two students making their way towards the administration building had come into earshot. As they passed, they mumbled an awkward greeting of respect, and cast a curious glance in my direction. The firm nod and encouraging smile he gave them told me that he enjoyed his position at the pinnacle of this institution. I could not help wondering how many lies he might be willing to tell in order to keep it. As their footfalls died away, he said, “no, I don’t believe that’s what happened. At least, I did not believe it at the time.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Surely the possibility must have crossed your mind when you first heard of Monaghan’s murder?”
“Yes. But you see there were other factors which made that seem unlikely. Montini had been taken into custody. Gooden had phoned me late the previous evening to tell me his mission had been a success. I had detected nothing in his voice to indicate that anything had gone wrong. In fact he told me that he had rushed to complete everything early because he had seen on Monaghan’s desk a note about the scheduled meeting with Montini. And finally a xeroxed set of the documents was sitting on my desk when I arrived the next day. Under the circumstances it all sounded very logical.”
“If all of this had come out at the time, the investigation might have taken a different turn.”
“Yes.” Symansky sighed and looked at his watch. “But as I’ve said we all had our reasons for keeping silent. It saddens me now because so much of what happened back then now seems so pointless, but had I been questioned by the police, I probably would have lied.”
“So what did Gooden phone you about last Tuesday?”
The question caught him by surprise. He hesitated. He looked puzzled.
“Who told you about that phone call? Not Gooden, surely?”
“No.” I did not bother to elaborate.
“It was a very strange call,” he muttered.
I waited.
“At first he told me Naomi Monaghan had been murdered. He wanted to know whether I or the CIA had any reason to be involved. I told him, if I remember correctly, that I thought it was a ridiculous suggestion. Then he reminded me that Washington had been involved in having the charges dropped against Montini and the Monaghan investigation closed. I probably didn’t handle my end of the conversation very well. I thought maybe he was still involved with the RCMP. But I really doubted that. So why the phone call? It didn’t make sense. I became very prudent in my answers. I probably only succeeded in sounding evasive.”
“So why did he phone?”
“I wish I knew.” He seemed to be struggling with some inner dilemma. “Later, I thought that maybe he expected me to report back to the CIA, and thus through a circuitous route back to the RCMP, perhaps to warn them that Naomi’s death might become an eventual problem and that maybe they should keep an eye on the investigation. Try to put a lid on it the way they did with the Monaghan investigation.”
“Did you?”
“Call the CIA? No. I told you I’m through with all of that and I meant it. The next day another possibility occurred to me, but it seemed a bit far-fetched.” He gave me a weak smile, intended to convey both his own puzzlement and frustration. “It occurred to me that he may have thought his line was bugged or that he had decided to record the phone call. His end of the conversation would make him look innocent and divert attention elsewhere. Possibly towards me and the CIA.” He watched my reaction. “Was that why you came here to grill me?”
I did not answer. My thoughts were elsewhere. For a moment I wondered whether Gooden’s phone call had indeed succeeded in diverting my attention. I had earlier written Symansky off my list of prime suspects. But should I have? What if Symansky were lying and Gooden’s phone call had been a puzzled but genuine inquiry? I wondered what Gina and Phil were making out of all of this.