by Tom Gabbay
The next thing I knew, I was lying on a four-poster bed in a quiet room, looking up at the ceiling, with no idea where I was or how I got there. I didn’t know if seconds, minutes, or hours had passed. I tried to sit up, but aside from my eyes, I was immobile. I was back in my body, but not connected up yet.
I looked around the room. Heavy velvet drapes were drawn across French windows and soft flames crackled away in a big stone fireplace. It was first-class accommodation, although a bit bloodthirsty in decor. The heads of various beasts stared down from the walls and the marble floor was covered with the pelts of bears, zebras, tigers, that sort of thing. Above the fireplace was a dark painting of a naked man on horseback firing arrows into a wounded lion. I was having a déjà vu, feeling I’d been there before—not just the place, but the moment. It was the drug, I thought, causing a memory synapse to misfire.
I closed my eyes, exhaled, and tried to relax. There was something I wanted to remember, something important, but it kept slipping away. I let myself drift back into the dark….
Twilight on the canal, the lights of the city coming to life, flitting across the water like playful angels drowning in our wake. I was in the back of the boat, a blanket around my shoulders, feeling safe and calm, at one with everything around me. As the canal opened up into a broad waterway, we picked up speed. The sudden rush of air was exhilarating and I got lost in the moment.
Then I sensed something. I turned my attention back into the boat. Chase was in front, behind the wheel, Johnson in the seat beside me, his head thrown back, eyes closed. But there was someone else, too. … J leaned forward, looked past Johnson, and there, sitting head in hands, looking very seasick, was what I was looking for.
Horst. …
I sat up sharply. The son of a bitch had set me up. That’s what I was trying to remember. Horst had set me up.
Realizing that I was mobile again, I jumped onto my feet too abruptly, went light-headed, and had to catch myself on one of the bedposts. I lowered myself onto the floor and let it pass.
The pamphlets hadn’t come from Kovinski’s jacket! Horst had planted them so I would find the address stamped on the back and go to the warehouse, where Fisher and friends would be waiting to jump me! Horst had probably been in the middle of putting them in Kovinski’s file when I interrupted him. And I’d gone for it, convincing myself that Kovinski was just dumb enough to stamp the Company address on a piece of disinformation. The words hook, line, and sinker came to mind. But Horst was just playing spies, doing what he was told. The person who had truly set me up and sold me down the river was none other than Sam Clay.
He was right on cue. The door opened and in he walked. “I see you’re back among the living,” he smiled.
I pulled myself up off the floor and gave him a “fuck you from the bottom of my heart” look. I felt betrayed in a way that I didn’t realize I still had in me. Sam had been my sponsor, my mentor, and even, I thought, a true friend. Not an idealist by any means but, I’d believed, a man with some basic principles. Apparently not.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“I saw Horst on the boat.”
“No shit? They said you wouldn’t remember a thing. I’m impressed.”
“I guess I should be, too. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
He drew a breath and frowned. “It’s complicated, Jack.”
“No, Sam. It’s not complicated. It’s simple. It’s so fucking simple that I’m not even going to say it.”
He turned away and moved to the window, peeked past the drapery into the outside world. It wasn’t just idle curiosity. He was looking for something.
“Why’d you bring me here?” I said. “Why didn’t you just leave me doped up and put a couple of bullets in me at the appropriate moment? That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s the idea.” He dropped the curtain and turned back toward me. His face betrayed no emotion, just a cold hard stare.
“How’s it supposed to happen?” I asked.
“No idea,” he said with a smile. “Operational details are being held at a lower level.”
“Plausible deniability.”
“That’s right.”
“Which was created to protect the president.”
“Not this time,” he said blithely.
I tried to fathom what would make Sam sell out like this. Was he being pushed aside and didn’t like how it felt? He was too much of a player to call it quits and maybe this was his insurance. Without the game he had nothing, so maybe in order to keep his place at the table, he was willing to bet it all, including his soul.
“It’s wrong, Sam.”
“Sure, Jack, I know. It’s wrong as hell.” He looked out the window again. “We don’t have much time. They’ll be here soon.”
“Who?”
He moved away from the window, looked around the room. “You almost fucked up the whole plan, you know, spooking Kovinski like that. He went off half-cocked.”
“I take it he’s history.”
“More like he never existed. You’re the one slated for the history books.”
“So I hear.” I was feeling kind of wobbly, but didn’t want to show it, so I stayed on my feet. “Whose bright idea was that?”
“Mine.”
“Great …” The room started to spin. “Always could count on you for a good time. …” I was heading for a crash landing, but Sam got hold of my arm, guided me over to the bed.
“That shit really did a number on you.”
“You could say that.” I fell back onto the pillow.
“You probably need food. I’ll order up some dinner when we’re done.”
“The Last Supper?”
“The Last Supper,” he echoed. “Funny. Is that a Judas joke?”
“If the shoe fits …”
“You gotta have some faith in me, Jack.”
“Faith?!” I laughed. “For Christ’s sake, Sam. I’ve been bitten, punched, tackled, arrested, shot at, drugged, double-crossed, and hung out to dry thanks to you.”
“That’s why you need faith.”
“Excuse me if I say ‘fuck you’ instead.”
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes. “Smoke?”
I was dying for one, and he knew I would be, but I hesitated. “Help yourself,” he insisted, flipping the lid open and offering them. I relented, propped myself up on one elbow, and tried to take one. I couldn’t get it out.
“Let me show you,” he said with a smile, removing a false top that had the tips of nineteen cigarettes attached to it. Underneath was a small barrel, the diameter of the missing Lucky, protruding from a metal box.
“It’s triggered here,” he said, indicating the side of the pack, “by this button underneath the wrapping. You have to give it a good push with your thumb. They didn’t want it to be too sensitive, for obvious reasons.” He held the pack in his hand, demonstrated how to fire it. “The tech boys say it’s accurate up to twenty feet, but I’d be skeptical about that. You want to be close in, I’d say, point-blank if you can.” He twisted the bottom of the pack open to reveal three pointed pellets—small, probably six-millimeter—stowed in a thin piece of Styrofoam. “They’re hollowed out,” he said, “and filled with hydrogen cyanide. It’s not pretty, but it’s quick. Five to twenty seconds, depending where you get your target. The closer you are to a major artery, the faster it’ll be. There’s one in the chamber already, so you’ve got four shots to work with. To reload you just drop one down the barrel.” He replaced the top and handed me the pack. “That’s it,” he said.
“What the hell’s going on, Sam?”
“Like I said, I know what’s supposed to happen tomorrow, but I don’t have a clue where or how.”
“And since I’m the fall guy, I have to be there, so I can use this to stop it….”
“That’s the idea,” he said.
“Well, it’s a fucked-up idea, Sam.
Significantly fucked up.”
“You got a better one?”
“Yeah! How about we use these pellets on the assholes who thought this thing up! That’s who you’re waiting for, isn’t it?”
“Some of them.”
I paused, took a deep breath. “Just how big is this thing, Sam?”
“I’m not even sure myself,” he sighed. “But it seems to go in every which way. Including up.”
“How high?”
“I can only guess.”
“Christ, Sam. How’d you get mixed up in it?”
He exhaled, and sat down beside me on the bed. “Somebody in special ops came to me a few months ago, felt me out about servicing an outside client. I knew it was iffy, but I went along to see where it was going. I didn’t find out who the target was until about two weeks ago and then I realized how big the setup was. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really think it would come off until you came back with the information from the Colonel.”
I turned the cigarette gun over in my hand. It looked real enough. I put my thumb on the trigger, got the feel of it. “How do you know I’ll be close enough?”
“That’s one thing I do know. Iceberg’s my operation.” I gave him a look but he shrugged it off. “As you know, we’re providing the cover story, which includes you. You’ll be on-site, in the same general vicinity as the shooter. Johnson and Chase will be assigned to you, and a Secret Service agent who’s in on it will be close by. As soon as the president’s a confirmed kill, they set you loose and shoot you on the run. The Secret Service guy gets to be the hero.”
“When the president’s a confirmed kill? Jesus, Sam.”
“Well?”
“Johnson, Chase, and the Secret Service guy. What about the shooter—is there just the one?”
“Three,” he said.
“It gets better all the time.”
“They’ll be in separate locations. But if you get one, they’ll abort.”
“And if I do manage to pull it off? What about next time?”
“It’ll buy me some time. Maybe I can figure out who’s behind it before they put it together again.”
“Four bullets, four guys,” I said. “Not great odds, are they?” I dropped the pack onto one of the bedside tables.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I haven’t got anything else up my sleeve.”
I took a deep breath.
“You figure the world’s worth saving, Sam?”
“I dunno,” he said. “It’s fucked up, all right. But it’s the only one we’ve got.”
NINETEEN
The last of three cars pulled up outside the house. “That’s it,” Sam said, turning away from the window. “Everybody’s here.” I was lying back on the bed, smoking one of Melik’s Turkish blends, trying to convince myself that I had a chance of surviving the next twenty-four hours. Sam had told me that these guys were coming to give the final thumbs-up (or down) on the operation, but he wouldn’t say who they were no matter how hard I pressed him. So I was surprised when he threw me my jacket.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“You’re on.”
“On?”
“It’s showtime.”
“Nobody knocked on my door and said, ‘Five minutes, Mr. Teller.’”
“Put the jacket on, Jack.”
I crushed the cigarette in the ashtray I had balanced on my chest, rolled off the bed, and slipped the jacket on over my T-shirt. “I guess they wanna see who you got for the Kovinski role,” I said.
“That’s the idea.”
“I should feel honored.”
“Just don’t fuck up.” Sam was uncharacteristically edgy, which didn’t do a lot for my nerves.
“How the hell am I gonna fuck up, Sam?”
“If they decide to abort this thing, you won’t be getting that last meal I promised you. So be cooperative.”
“Cooperative is my middle name,” I said, and Sam opened the door.
An old grandfather clock was striking eleven as we entered the ground-floor library. It was a substantial room, with oak-paneled walls and a twenty-five-foot-high vaulted ceiling. A circular stairway led up to a book-lined gallery around the upper perimeter, interrupted only by a massive stone chimney that was decorated with a variety of antique guns, knives, swords, and instruments of medieval torture.
Five leather armchairs were arranged by the fire at the far end of the room, three of them occupied—by a silver-haired gentleman with his back to me and, to his right, a fat guy with a pencil mustache, who I recognized as agency legend Harvey King. Sitting opposite him was a small, wiry fellow with a gray brush cut, thick glasses, a short-sleeved white shirt, and a red bow tie. He was drinking Pepsi out of a bottle.
“Sit down, Jack,” the silver-haired man said. I knew the face, but I couldn’t place it. Wide cheekbones and broad shoulders, strong, chiseled features, wavy hair, and full lips, he looked like an aging Roman god. Dressed impeccably from head to toe in oversize Italian eyeglasses, a silk tie, blue blazer, and two-hundred-dollar shoes, he oozed money.
“Relax,” he said smoothly in a slight accent. “Have a drink. I can recommend the cognac. It’s one hundred years old.”
“Bourbon,” I said to a butler type who was hovering in a corner. Sam ordered scotch on the rocks and took the seat between the smooth talker and the Pepsi man. The empty chair with its back to the flames was reserved for me.
“A lot of men in your position would try to bullshit their way out of it,” the silver-haired man continued, “but I’m guessing that you’re smart enough to know there is no way out. The question for you is not what will happen, it’s how it will happen. I’d like to see you get through it with as much dignity and as little pain as possible.”
“I’ll go along with that,” I said, accepting my drink. The man in the bow tie tapped his empty bottle with a fingernail by way of ordering a new one.
“Fine.” The silver-haired man smiled warmly, then paused to look around at his colleagues. They showed no expression, which seemed to mean they were satisfied so far. His gaze landed back on me, and just then I realized why I knew the face.
Johnny Rosetti was a highly successful businessman in South Florida, with interests in numerous restaurants, nightclubs, and hotels. But those were just fronts, used to launder the money he made off gambling, prostitution, drugs, extortion, murder … that sort of thing. But as much as Rosetti and his pals pulled in, it didn’t compare to what they lost when Castro tossed them out of Cuba. A hundred million a year was a conservative estimate—tax-free, of course. Naturally, they wanted it back and weren’t too impressed with Kennedy’s efforts in that department, so I wasn’t exactly shocked to find him a member of our little group.
“Isn’t it great?” I said, unable to help myself.
“What?” Rosetti smiled graciously.
“That a small-time pimp like yourself could rise out of the gutter to reach the very pinnacle of society. Imagine—one-hundred-year-old cognac. What a country, huh?”
The smile froze on Rosetti’s face and his eyes went ice-cold. I wished I had the poison pellets because I would’ve been very pleased to put one in his eye then and there. But if anyone was gonna die in the next few seconds, it was me. Fortunately, Harvey King didn’t give a shit about Johnny Rosetti’s wounded pride.
“Let’s get to the fucking point,” the big man said, shifting his considerable weight toward me. He had a funny, high-pitched voice that didn’t fit his three-hundred-pound frame.
Harvey and I had crossed paths a couple of times in the lead-up to the invasion, but just in passing. He kept a low profile around the agency, steering clear of anything that smacked of camaraderie. He was a hero to the cowboys he ran in and out of Cuba, who loved the fact that a hard-drinking, gun-toting, whore-chasing son of a bitch like Harvey could roam the halls of power, sticking it to the preppies who ran the place. The leadership, with their Ivy League cool, put up with him as a necessary, if unpleasant, char
acter who was an acknowledged wizard when it came to black ops. Both factions were incensed when he got early retirement courtesy of Bobby Kennedy.
“Tell me about Zapata,” he said, referring to the code name for the Bay of Pigs. “What happened with you and Fisher?”
“We didn’t see eye to eye,” I said, not sure where he was going with it.
“He arrested you, didn’t he?”
“He locked me up.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, I didn’t agree with some of the stuff he was doing.” He glared at me for a beat, snorted, then reached into his jacket, pulled out a handkerchief, and sneezed into it. I thought his eyes were gonna pop out of his head. “You were concerned about the Guantánamo operation,” he said, wiping his nose.
“That’s right.”
“How did you know about it?
“Fisher told me.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That a bunch of mercenaries dressed as Cuban regulars were going to attack American forces at the base in an effort to provoke the president into sending in the Marines.”
“You thought that was wrong?”
“Yeah, I thought it was wrong.”
“I want you to give me the names of everyone you discussed that operation with.”
I saw what he was getting at now. Once I was a world-famous dead assassin, every hack in the country would be tracking down anybody I ever said hello to. Harvey wanted names so he could make them disappear before some reporter got to them. He was protecting his operation’s integrity. (Their word, not mine.)
“Go to hell,” I said. He smiled and nodded, looking unexpectedly pleased with my response.
“Did you report your concerns about the Guantánamo operation to anyone in the government?” he continued.
“Yes, I did.”
“The name and agency of that person?”
“Sam Clay of Central Intelligence,” I said. Harvey turned to Sam, who nodded.
“That’s true,” he said. “And I told him to forget about it.”