The Tears of Autumn

by Charles McCarry

  “Yes.”

  “Then you see the pattern. Oswald had a tremendous fight with our consul in Mexico City, a man named Azque, when he wouldn’t issue the visa with no questions asked. Azque thought he was rabid.”

  “Yes, I’d heard that. He also got into a sweat with the people at the Soviet embassy. They reported it to Center.”

  “Did he? I’m glad I didn’t know that. The Russians didn’t want any part of him, naturally. No one did, poor fool.”

  “How did you make contact?”

  “Telephone. We’d given him a time schedule for the call and a recognition code. We told him to stay at the Comercio, it’s a dump. He hung about for two or three days and I had him surveilled. He was clean. So I called him up. He made the meeting in the park that same evening without any hesitation, precisely on time, hair all combed.”

  “I hope you didn’t wear your uniform.”

  “No—suit, tie, briefcase. I let him see a pistol under my coat. I gave him no identification. I don’t know what he thought I was. I played it very serious.”

  “Like a Russian?”

  “He may have thought that. I told him nothing. He made a point of not asking.” Ruiz made a comical face. “He wanted to look like a professional. He was very eager to be treated with respect. I obliged.”

  “How did you lay the mission on him?”

  “You have to understand I never thought he’d go through with it. I just gave it to him cold: when Kennedy is in Dallas in the last week of November, kill him. Use a rifle. Wear gloves. Abandon the weapon and walk away.”

  “How did he react?”

  “He was calm, casual. When I told him he’d change history he jumped a little and gave me a funny look, as if I’d touched him in the wrong place.”

  Ruiz was enjoying his anecdote. He was smiling now and searching Christopher’s face for reaction.

  “I mentioned plastic surgery, a new identity, a career of doing the same sort of thing in the future,” Ruiz said. “Amateurs really believe such things are possible.”

  “And you promised to get him out after the shooting?”

  “Of course. He wasn’t the kind who wanted to die. He was all fantasy. He imagined himself in a Socialist country, famous with all the secret people. It was a matter of letting him smell the life he’d always wanted. Respect, trust—his greatness acknowledged.”

  “Weren’t you afraid he’d panic when you didn’t show up?”

  “Once again, I had no idea he’d succeed. I thought he might try and be killed by the security forces. It was logical that that should happen.”

  “Even failing, he might have talked.”

  “Never. He wasn’t the type. We would have broken him, or the Russians. But not the Americans. It would have been a federal case. The FBI doesn’t torture people. In any case, they would have seen he was crazy. If he’d mentioned me, the FBI would have thought I was another of his fantasies.”

  “You thought all that out at the time?”

  “Frankly, no. But afterward it was plain. It was Oswald who chose the meeting place for after the assassination—that movie house. The Texas Theater? He said it would be easy for me to remember. A movie house. That was the amateur.”

  “He wanted you to meet him there?”

  “Oh, yes. He became very brisk—told me what sort of car to get for the escape, recommended a used-car dealer, drew a map of the routes south. He said we’d be across the border into Mexico before the American police recovered from the shock. I agreed with everything, as if he were a genius.”

  “Money?”

  “I didn’t offer him any—it would have been fatal. He wanted to prove his value. The operation cost nothing. He even had his own rifle and ammunition.”

  “He must have wanted communications with you.”

  “Certainly. I told him to rent a post office box at the Terminal Annex in Dallas when he was ready to go, and send me its number. I gave him an accommodation address in Mexico.”

  “Did he?”

  Ruiz laughed. “Yes. He wrote the number of the box on a piece of paper and circled the two middle digits. The number was 6225. I realized after the assassination that 22 was the day in November on which he intended to kill Kennedy. And so he did.”

  “That must have been happenstance, the box number.”

  “Maybe. When I saw Oswald in Mexico City, he had a clipping from a Dallas newspaper with him, saying that Kennedy would be in Dallas on November 21 and 22. Those were the dates the Vietnamese had chosen—Do Minh Kha gets the American papers too. Oswald just wanted to tell me which day, so I’d be there to arrange his getaway. You know what these fools are like—they imagine a great secret apparatus exists, able to do anything. It’s a good thing for us that they do believe it.”

  “If he’d already clipped the story, he might have gone ahead with the shooting anyway.”

  “It’s possible,” Ruiz said. “He’d had the idea for a long time. All I did was give him a rationale. After he talked to me, he was doing it for the revolution, entering history. I think that would have been important to him—to have his act known by the men in the apparatus. That way, he wasn’t just a cheap little nut, he was the avenger of the masses.”

  “You’re a good psychologist, Manuel.”

  “Fair. Oswald was easy material.”

  Ruiz rose from his chair and pulled his sweat-soaked shirt away from his body. He reached under the table and brought out a bottle of beer. When he struck off the cap, placing its lip against the edge of the table and striking downward with the heel of his hand, the beer spurted. Ruiz put the neck in his mouth to prevent waste, then filled Christopher’s cup. It was a bitter local brand, heavily carbonated. Ruiz belched and shook his head rapidly in apology.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?” Christopher said. “Oswald did enter history, but he never had any idea who he was killing for, did he?”

  “Not a clue. That was the beauty of it. I wondered at the time, just as you did, why Do had let me give him this pathetic queer, why he imagined this man would have the balls to do it. Do had it planned down to the day and the hour and the exact intersection of streets. He seemed to think the plan was so foolproof that any fool could fire the rifle. It goes to show you how clever these Vietnamese are, and how we underestimate them. The Americans are going to learn a lot over there.”

  Christopher lifted his canteen cup. “I hope so,” he said.

  Ruiz had told his story with nonchalance. Now his face collapsed into an expression of comical urgency. He slammed the beer bottle on the tabletop and rushed out of the hut. Christopher followed and saw Ruiz, tearing at his belt, running toward the bamboo screen that hid the latrine. He heard the Cuban’s bowels open in a loud burst of gas and liquid. Ruiz groaned and retched, squatting astride the ditch with his arms wrapped around his own body.

  Christopher, a pace behind the crouching man, drew the .22 pistol from his belt and fired two rounds of birdshot into the base of Ruiz’s neck; the pistol’s weak report could barely be heard above the drums. Ruiz emitted a groan, full of breath as if he had been kicked in the stomach, and fell forward into the ditch.

  A mile down the path, Christopher found Nsango sitting in the Jeep, listening to the drums.

  “The Cubans may follow,” Christopher said. “Manuel won’t be good for much when he wakes up, but he’ll be able to send the others.”

  “The drums will tell me,” Nsango said, “the savage heartbeat of the Congo.”

  His teeth shone in the darkness. He held up a finger for silence and turned on the headlights. Behind them in the camp, the drums stopped. They heard four long bursts of fire from the Kalashnikovs. After each burst, Nsango held up another finger.

  “Only Manuel is left,” he said. “Send me a postcard, Paul, when he’s no longer needed.”

  FOURTEEN

  1

  When Christopher arrived at Patchen’s house on M Street, the others were already there. Foley still wore a black tie, but he had taken o
ff his PT-109 tie clasp. He spoke in a louder voice and his handshake was rougher. He had begun to take on some of the mannerisms of the new President, but he hadn’t yet perfected the style. Foley was between personalities; though his language was stronger, he was pale and less alert than he had been. It was apparent that he counted for less in the White House. He deferred to another man, a stranger to Christopher, who stood with his back to a fire of birch logs in Patchen’s fireplace. Patchen introduced Christopher.

  “J. D. Trumbull,” said the man. Trumbull had a disarming smile and a chuckling Texas accent. He wore Western boots and a brown suit, beautifully tailored but unpressed, apparently, since the day it was bought. When Trumbull shook hands, he grasped Christopher’s forearm with his other hand and squeezed.

  “Old David tells us you’ve been through one hell of a lot in the last few weeks,” Trumbull said. “We appreciate it.”

  When Trumbull said “we” he managed to sketch a likeness of Lyndon Johnson in the empty air over his shoulder. Christopher looked into the man’s ruddy, open face for an instant before stepping backward to free his arm.

  Patchen filled four glasses with ice, poured scotch into them, and passed them around. “I don’t have any soda,” he said.

  “This’s just fine,” Trumbull said. “Tastes better but it’s worse for you.” Trumbull sipped his whiskey and turned his eyes to Patchen. “Now,” he said.

  “I’ll assume Dennis has briefed you on the background to Christopher’s report,” Patchen said.

  Trumbull nodded.

  “I’m not Christopher’s best salesman,” Foley said. “But I told J.D. what his suspicions were.”

  Christopher realized that Foley had not addressed him directly since the night they met in Webster’s apartment.

  “In the past week or so,” Patchen said, “Christopher has been to Vietnam, to Europe, to the Congo. He’s talked with the people involved. He’s put his life in hazard, and it’s still in hazard.”

  As he spoke the last sentence, Patchen shifted his unblinking eyes from Trumbull to Foley. Foley returned the stare, tapping his nose with a forefinger.

  “Now wait a minute,” Trumbull said. “As I understand it, Paul is no longer with us.” He turned to Christopher. “You’ve been doing all this on your own?”

  “Yes,” Patchen answered. “He wasn’t operating under our auspices, nor did he have our support. He ceased to be our employee before he started out. What he has to report to us he’s reporting as a courtesy to the government. Bear in mind that this information belongs to Christopher, not the government.”

  “All right,” Trumbull said. “Let’s have it.”

  Patchen took Christopher’s report, a bundle of typed sheets with several photographs attached, out of his briefcase and handed it to Trumbull. “You’ll have to take turns reading it,” he said. “There are no copies, and I think you’ll agree there shouldn’t be any.”

  “Who’s read it so far?” Foley asked.

  “I have. The Director refused to read it.”

  J. D. Trumbull put on a pair of half-moon reading glasses and settled back into his easy chair. He read rapidly, wetting a forefinger as he turned the typed pages. He went through the photographs and the attached documents slowly; when he saw Frankie Pigeon’s confession and Glavanis’s photographs of the naked gangster he gave a series of soft snorts. When he was finished, he closed the folder with care and handed it to Foley. There was no jollity left in Trumbull’s face. He passed his eyes over Christopher once, then crossed his legs and stared at the tip of his boot while Foley read the file.

  The four men faced each other, Foley and Trumbull in chairs on one side of a coffee table, Christopher and Patchen on a sofa on the other side. Christopher watched Foley. As he read, his face tightened. Once or twice he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. He finished the last page, closed the folder, and tossed it on the coffee table. A photograph fell to the floor, the picture of the dead gunmen by the paddy in Saigon. Patchen picked it up and put it back into the file folder.

  “That’s pretty rough reading,” Trumbull said. “David, what’s Paul’s background?”

  “Christopher has been decorated twice for his work. He is a very senior officer. Within the outfit, his skill and his accuracy have never been questioned.”

  Foley cleared his throat. “He’s also Patchen’s best and oldest friend,” he said.

  “That’s irrelevant,” Patchen said. “The question before us is this report.”

  Trumbull peered over his glasses. “Paul,” he said, “I’d like a little more flavor before I make a comment. Tell us how you see this.”

  “It’s all there, in the report.”

  “I mean in your own words.”

  “Those are my own words, Mr. Trumbull.”

  “I know that, boy. What I want you to do is talk us through it.”

  Foley got to his feet, went to the bar, and made himself another drink. He took his glass to the window and stood there, looking into the quiet street.

  “The truth is plain enough,” Christopher said. “Before I go into it, I want to ask you a question.”

  Trumbull said, “Ask away.”

  “What exactly was the role of the U.S. government in the coup that overthrew Ngo Dinh Diem?”

  Trumbull stared for a moment at Foley’s rigid back. Then he said to Patchen, “Tell him.”

  “I think you already know, Paul,” Patchen said. “In simple terms, we countenanced it. We knew it was being planned. We offered advice. We provided support. We encouraged the plot. We welcomed the results.”

  “Who exactly is ‘we’?” Christopher asked.

  “It was a White House project. They handled it, for the most part, with their staff and their communications. The foreign-policy establishment ran errands. There was no plan to kill Diem and Nhu.”

  “No plan? What did you people imagine was going to happen to them?”

  “There’s no point in arguing that now, Paul. What happened, happened.”

  J. D. Trumbull had been gazing idly at Dennis Foley’s back. Now he turned his eyes, set in nests of wrinkles, on Christopher.

  “Old Dennis told me you were upset about Diem and Nhu and how they died,” he said. “I think that speaks well of you, Paul. But it reminds me of what Harry Truman said about the bleeding hearts who kept on weeping and gnashing their teeth and crying shame and damnation after we dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. President Truman said he heard a lot about all those dead Japs, but damn little about the drowned American sailors at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. You’ve got to keep your eye on the whole balance sheet.”

  “You just got through reading the balance sheet, Mr. Trumbull.”

  “Well, maybe. What you’ve given us in this report is just bare bones, Paul. I’d still like to hear it from your own lips, if you think you’re ready to talk to us now.”

  “This seems redundant,” Christopher said. “The facts are in my report. All the rest—how I operated and why, what people looked like when I spoke to them, how much money it cost —is background noise. If it helps you to understand, I can tell you all that.”

  “Do that,” Trumbull said. “I’m just an old country lawyer. I’d like to hear how you fellows do the things you do.”

  At that, Patchen smiled at last and picked up his glass of scotch. Trumbull had been sipping his own whiskey for some moments, and he rattled the ice in his empty glass and gave Patchen an inquiring look. Patchen fetched him another drink.

  2

  Christopher began to speak.

  “The report deals with the main question—who assassinated President Kennedy and why—and with two incidental pieces of information,” he said. “These treat with the murder of Oswald, and with the possibility that heroin and other drugs will be used as weapons of war against U.S. troops in Vietnam. The Oswald murder—execution would be a better word—and the heroin just popped up in the course of the search for information about the assassination.
There is no doubt about the truth of the matter where the assassinations of Kennedy and Oswald are concerned. As to the heroin, Patchen and the outfit can pursue it. It’s more important than the other two questions, because you can still do something about it. It’s intelligence. The rest of what I reported is just explanation.”

  Trumbull leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I’m learning,” he said. “You fellows are a cold bunch.”

  “I’ll deal first with the Kennedy assassination,” Christopher said. “This is the way it happened: Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, his brother, believed for some time that the Kennedy Administration wanted to overthrow their regime and replace it with a more pliant one. The Ngos knew that a coup was being plotted—they knew everything that went on in Saigon. There is collateral intelligence in the files on these two points. I reported some of it myself while the Ngo brothers were still alive.

  “Around the beginning of September, Diem and Nhu gave up all hope that they could survive. They were realists; they knew the power of the United States and the ambitions of the South Vietnamese generals. Diem and Nhu expected to be overthrown, and I believe they knew their enemies would kill them. They made plans to revenge themselves—to spit out of their graves, as one of their relatives put it. You have to understand that they didn’t want revenge for personal reasons. They regarded the coup and their own murders as an insult to their family and to the Vietnamese nation.

  “It’s normal in South Asia for people, even educated people, to horoscope important projects. They believe there are forces beyond human intelligence that have an effect on the acts of men—you can smile, Mr. Trumbull, but if you don’t understand that reality, and give it due weight, you’ll be making an arrogant mistake. You may think horoscopy is primitive, but it exists, and it’s used as a matter of course throughout the tropical world.

  “You’ve seen that there are two sets of horoscopes, both drawn by the Chinese Yu Lung in Saigon. The first set was drawn up on September 8,1963. It predicted, quite accurately, that Diem and Nhu would be murdered and that the murder would be instigated by a powerful foreigner.