Frame 232

by Wil Mara

  He got behind his desk, spent another half hour on paperwork, then turned to his computer. It was a somewhat-outdated system, at least five years behind the latest models in offices across America. Still, having one of his own made him part of a very tiny Cuban minority. He opened his e-mail program and waited. All messages would be filtered through the ministry even though most were part of the nation’s Intranet; very few came from outside. Eleven appeared on the screen, most from senders he immediately recognized. One did not look familiar but, judging by the subject line, was part of a mass mailing from some ambitious bureaucrat in the ministry trying to splash his name around.

  It was the last one that gave him a jolt. It appeared to be spam—American spam—from a furniture store that was going out of business. Impossible. Such a thing would never clear the government’s filters. Then Diaz realized what it truly was, and his large mouth dropped open.

  “No,” he mumbled, guiding the cursor toward it. “It can’t be. . . .” He clicked on the message, read it from top to bottom, and said, “No” one more time. Every function in his body felt as though it had ceased.

  There was a phone number embedded in the ad. Diaz was amazed that he remembered how to decode it after all these years. He did not write it down but rather committed it to memory in his reeling, overwhelmed mind.

  Then he rose and hurried out.

  The tiny white Peugeot—standard issue among Cuban police—zipped through the rain-soaked Matanzas streets, its blue light turned off but its radio antenna waving crazily. Diaz went down a narrow corridor to a construction site that had been abandoned two years earlier. The crude wooden fence that surrounded it was covered with political graffiti, including a DayGlo rendering of Che Guevara over the motto “Hasta la Victoria, Siempre!” Until the Victory, Always!

  Diaz parked between the fence and a rusting Dumpster on the south side, well out of view. Removing his cell phone, he licked his lips and dialed the number. It was answered immediately.

  “Tardó mucho en llamar,” the voice on the other end told him. You took too long to call.

  “Estaba en mi oficina y tuve que salir,” Diaz replied. I was in my office and had to leave. “What is it you want?”

  “Your services are required.”

  A shudder went through him—this was precisely what he didn’t want to hear. No, please. . . . He was still having trouble believing the conversation was even taking place. It had been more than eight years since he last heard from this man, whose name was still unknown to him. He had prayed—literally, on his knees, alongside his wife and children during their own entreaties—that the man had died somewhere along the way. The fact that he was there now, alive and well, was the manifestation of a thousand nightmares. “I thought we agreed last time that my services were no longer available. I thought it was understood that the last time would, in fact, be the last time.”

  “We dictate the rules where your services are concerned,” the man replied. “We do not have them dictated to us.”

  “And if I don’t cooperate?”

  “This is a waste of time. You will cooperate because you want to keep your home, your family, and your job. A job that you would not possess if not for us. Have you forgotten that the position only became open because the man who occupied it before you—a man who, if memory serves, passionately disliked you—conveniently died of a heart attack in spite of having a clean bill of health? You owe us on that alone, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Diaz did not reply.

  “Today you are the revered head of one of your nation’s most able police forces. The men under you would follow you off a cliff, and those over you believe your dedication to the revolution is absolute. I wonder, then, what would result if word got out about your past efforts to bring that same cause to ruin? If they knew, for example, of your part in the plot to assassinate three of your leader’s most trusted ministers in the spring of 1992? Or your facilitation of domestic protests two years later? Or, for that matter, the sheer volume of intelligence you have provided to my country over the course of—”

  “All right, all right,” Diaz said, undoing the top button of his shirt. “You have made your point. I was a different man then. I was trying to survive.”

  “Don’t insult me. You were selling yourself to the highest bidder. You know nothing about loyalty. Whoever provides you with the means to reach the next step on the ladder is your master.”

  Diaz felt sick to his stomach. So much about this man was coming back to him. He can see straight into a person’s soul. “Just tell me what you want,” he said in a whisper.

  “You will get in touch with some of your friends in Old Havana. Some of your friends from . . . your earlier days.”

  Breathing was becoming difficult now. Diaz put a hand on his chest. “For what purpose?”

  Rydell told him.

  32

  DAVID VOIGHT stepped out of a conference room in the U.S. Department of Justice and closed the door gently so as not to disturb those who remained inside. An anonymous woman who worked elsewhere in the vast universe of this million-plus-square-foot building walked by. Voight mouthed a silent hello, then set off down the long corridor. He was in his early fifties, of slight frame, with steel-rimmed glasses and dark hair combed in the same respectable style he’d had since prep school. He wore his usual dark suit and tie and carried a leather portfolio in the crook of his arm.

  He moved in a measured, purposeful stride, his leather shoes squeaking on the polished marble floor. When he started here six years ago, the noisy steps reminded him of his beloved basketball games at Cornell. But he was a veteran of the job now and barely noticed anymore. Like the hundreds of other federal prosecutors who worked in D.C., he had too much on his mind every day.

  He turned left and started down a ridiculously wide staircase; his office was three floors below. He never took the elevator; the steps were healthier. He was in terrific shape for his age and had every intention of staying that way. His father had been a boozer and a smoker and cashed out at the age of sixty-two, leaving David, his sister, and his mother nearly destitute. There was no way he was going to pass that legacy to his own wife and children. He felt great and never failed to thank God for it.

  He reached the last step and turned right, down a carpeted hallway. At the far end, in front of his door, he spotted a man sitting on the sofa in the waiting area. At this distance, he could only determine that the man had gray hair and was wearing a tan overcoat. His first thought was that it was someone from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. He’d been going several rounds with them lately, and they’d been sending people nonstop. Most came without an appointment, and his secretary had been making them wait in the hall as a kind of punishment.

  As Voight drew closer, however, something about the stranger seemed familiar. Full recognition struck when the man realized he was being approached and turned.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Voight said, a smile spreading across his face. “Can it really be?”

  Henry Moore stood, wiped the wrinkles off his coat, and held out a hand. “Hello, David.”

  “Mr. Moore . . .” Voight still could not bring himself to refer to the man by his first name in spite of Moore’s repeated urgings over the years. It just didn’t seem appropriate where former teachers were concerned. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “My secretary gave me your message, and I was going to get back to you this evening, from home. I didn’t know you were in the area.”

  “I wasn’t,” Moore replied. “I flew in this morning. I haven’t even been to my hotel yet.”

  Voight’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry; you . . . you weren’t in town when you called?”

  Moore shook his head. “No. Look, David, I need your help, and I need it very quickly.”

  Voight suddenly realized something—Moore hadn’t smiled back, hadn’t asked him how his folks were doing, hadn’t cracked one of his characteristically lame jokes. There was no geniality to the man. True
, there were times when he could be bearish, particularly when he went into one of his tirades about the eroding ethics of the legal profession, tirades that Voight secretly held dear to his heart when he had been formulating his own career. But there was always that underlying paternalistic kindness that endeared him not only to the much younger David Voight but to just about every one of David’s classmates as well. That warmth was absent now, replaced by an unsettling nervousness that Voight had never seen before. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Yes, there is.” Moore looked up and down the hallway. Then, evidently estimating that there were just too many people coming and going, he took Voight by the crook of the arm and led him gently forward. “Have you been following the stories in the news about this Jason Hammond fellow and the Kennedy assassination?”

  “I’ve heard about it, although I haven’t been watching closely. Someone independently reinvestigates that case every week or so, and the government always ends up the bad guy. If I took the time to address every single accusation in that regard, I’d never—”

  “It’s all true,” Moore said, turning to face him. They had reached an elevator atrium where there was no one else in sight. “Every word of it. This Hammond is onto something.”

  Voight stared at his old teacher with a touch of concern.

  “I’m not losing my mind, David, if that’s what you’re wondering. Don’t think all this snow on the roof means I’ve gone soft up there too.”

  The tiniest hint of a smile returned to Voight’s mouth. It wasn’t that he was reassured by the comment but rather that he found the folksy metaphor amusing. It was a welcome glimpse of the Henry Moore he had always known.

  A herd of young lawyers, all without jackets, ambled by. They glanced curiously at the conversation taking place between Counselor Voight and some guy none of them recognized.

  Moore waited until they passed, then led Voight into one of the waiting elevators. Once the doors closed, he said, “You know the girl Hammond is with? Sheila Baker?”

  “I knew there was a woman involved. I didn’t know her name.”

  “She’s a client of mine.”

  “No.”

  “She is. I was her parents’ attorney for years, long before she was even around.”

  “Okay . . . ?”

  “When her mother passed away, she left behind a key to a safe-deposit box that she opened in 1976. And do you know what was in it? A film she made of the shooting while she was standing in Dealey Plaza.”

  “You . . . No. Mr. Moore, tell me you’re not serious.”

  “Dead serious. She kept it a secret for the better part of half a century. Thousands of people have been looking for it. She was known as the Babushka Lady. I went on my computer and looked at the pictures of her standing there. It’s her, all right. I’m positive.”

  Voight struggled to get his mind around the massive reality of this. “Well . . . okay. That’s incredible. I mean, I won’t argue that that’s incredible. But why are you telling me?”

  “Because Sheila Baker has been kidnapped, and someone in the government is behind it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve talked to Hammond’s people in New Hampshire. I had to threaten them with a lawsuit, but they told me everything. When Sheila first discovered the film, she contacted Hammond because she was scared and didn’t know what else to do. She wanted to give it to Hammond and have him take care of it. But then someone else found out she had it too—someone who was able to keep her mama under surveillance all these years just in case the film turned up in her possession. As soon as it did, a gunman was hired to try to eliminate the daughter.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean—”

  “The killer blew Sheila’s mother’s house apart by staging a gas leak. I saw the wreckage myself. And then the guy murdered a professor from Southern Methodist, an expert on the Kennedy assassination, who’d been helping Hammond. Apparently he had also been under surveillance for some time. Now this same lunatic has kidnapped Sheila. He grabbed her while she was on a train from D.C. to Boston. I’ve seen the security film from the station in Delaware. That’s where he got her.”

  Voight was shaking his head. “I . . . I just don’t know what to say.”

  “Who else could coordinate such an effort, David? Who else would have the power, the resources, or the motive?”

  “What’s on the film that could’ve triggered all this?”

  “A second gunman.”

  Voight would remember the moment—Moore’s simple delivery of information that would send a tremor across the world when it became public—for the rest of his life. “That’s unbelievable.”

  “I said the same thing until I saw the images myself. Hammond converted the film into a digital file some time ago. The second gunman doesn’t actually fire a shot. But he’s plainly visible with his weapon.”

  “Where?”

  “In the storm drain on Elm Street. Margaret Baker’s camera was the only one that caught him.”

  Voight’s mind was swirling now. The enormity of it all, the implications . . .

  “. . . on this.”

  “What? I’m sorry.”

  “I’m asking you to act on this and to do it immediately. Sheila Baker is being held against her will by someone in this government. I’d bet my reputation on it. I’m asking you to launch an investigation right away. She has to be found.”

  The residue of doubt still clung to Voight’s thoughts, but it was eroding rapidly. He had known Henry Moore too long, had become too convinced of his thoroughness and seriousness, to go on thinking this was folly. If Moore believed some hidden entity in the government was involved, then Voight would treat it as fact. “Do you have the film with you? Or at least do you have access to it?”

  “It’s on my cell phone.”

  Voight reached over and poked the button that would take the elevator to the top floor.

  “Where are we headed?” Moore asked.

  “To see the attorney general.”

  33

  HAMMOND LEFT the sidewalk and turned down a quiet corridor between two small apartment buildings. His untucked silk shirt fluttered as a welcome breeze blew through the crushingly hot morning. Stopping at the steps of a service entrance, he guided himself into a sitting position like an arthritic old man. His eyes were red and watery, the lids impossibly heavy. He was badly in need of a shave. And he could not halt the tremor in his hands—a sign that he was short on both nutrition and rest. His nose had not been broken the night before, but it had swollen a bit and still throbbed like mad. Two teeth had been loosened. Above all else, though, he prayed he hadn’t suffered a concussion. His head was still pounding, but it was hard to take particular notice of it when everything else ached too.

  He leaned against the wall even though it was filthy, as were the steps, the tiny landing at the top, and the weather-beaten door. He took several deep breaths, staring forward with a dead man’s gaze. A child’s inflatable ball, strikingly red in contrast to the dull tones of its surroundings, rolled by. It was chased by a boy of no more than five or six, deeply tanned with a cherubic grin. Neither the child nor Hammond took much notice of the other.

  Hammond removed a notepad from his breast pocket. He flipped to the first page and reviewed the entries. Each one, rendered in his careful print, had been crossed out. Same with those on the next page and the next. The cancellation lines had become progressively darker and deeper as his frustration grew. He’d spoken with nearly sixty people, given out more than five hundred dollars, and believed he was no closer to finding Olivero Clemente than before. He hadn’t paid for information, he now realized. He had paid for misinformation. Every person with whom he’d spoken had been deceptive. For all he knew, he had already walked past Clemente’s home, maybe more than once. He was becoming familiar with the area through sheer repetition, learning the lay of the land. But he wasn’t learning what he needed to know most.

  He put the pad away, pulled up
his knees, and set his head down on his arms. Everything ached: every bone, every muscle, every tendon. He had never felt so used up. He’d had trouble sleeping again, and not just because of the physical pain or the dreams. The call and ensuing legal threats from Henry Moore had rattled him. Moore, Noah reported, clearly did not think much of what he called Hammond’s “reckless hobby.” That hurt for reasons Hammond still didn’t fully understand, although it nagged at him. No progress had been made where Sheila was concerned either.

  Every time Hammond thought about this, he felt sick to his stomach. No, he rationalized, he wasn’t the one who kidnapped her. Nor was he the one who blew her house to pieces or tried to shoot them both. But am I responsible for all of it nevertheless? It was this moral question that plagued him, and when he finally felt as though he was approaching an answer, he backed away from it simply because it wasn’t one he could live with. Yes, you are. If you had insisted she go to New Hampshire on the first day, she would still be there and still be safe. And what of Ben Burdick? Every time the guilt started eating into him about Sheila, thoughts of Ben came in tandem. Gone forever. And before you reentered his life . . . maybe he was a wreck of his former self, but at least he was alive.