Firebird_A Spy Story of the 1960's

by Noel Hynd

  On October 29, 1966, Pitzer died of “an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound,” according to Bethesda police. According to police, the wound was to the right temple. Pitzer was left-handed. Others who saw the death scene, however, insisted that the “suicide shot” was to the back of the neck, a physical impossibility.

  On the day of the assassination, Lee Edward Bowers, Jr. was working in a railyard control tower overlooking Dealey Plaza. From there, he had a view of the entire grassy knoll. At 12:30, he claimed to have heard three shots coming from either the Depository on his left, or from the area around an underpass to his right. He later stated that no one was standing immediately behind the fence at the front of the knoll when the shots were fired, but that four men were in the general area of the knoll.

  Bowers knew one man to be a parking lot attendant. He believed another man was also an attendant. The other two were a heavyset, middle-aged man and a youth in his twenties, wearing a plaid shirt or plaid suit jacket. When the shots were fired, Bowers claimed to catch sight of a flash of light or puff of smoke coming from the area of the two men. On August 9, 1966, Bowers was driving at in rural Midlothian, Texas. His car struck a bridge abutment. Bowers died four hours later, claiming that someone had drugged his coffee in a diner just before the accident.

  Gary Underhill worked for the CIA through the ’40s and ’50s in a freelance capacity, advising primarily on the subject of Soviet armaments. A Harvard graduate and photographer, he wrote professionally for military publications. He served as military affairs editor for Life Magazine. In the aftermath of the assassination, Underhill confided to friends that a small group of people in the CIA were responsible, and that Oswald was a patsy.

  “They set him up,” he said. “The bastards killed the President! I’ve heard things. I couldn’t believe they’d get away with it, but they did! But I know who they are. That’s the problem. They know I know.”

  On May 8, 1964, Underhill was found dead in his home. The death was ruled a suicide. The bullet wound was behind his left ear, practically in the back of the neck.

  Late in the afternoon, Cooper found Molloy and questioned him about the file. Molloy hunched his shoulders. “All very vague and theoretical,” he said.

  “Brett,” Cooper replied, “I’ve been around obituaries and deaths for a while. When a strange pattern emerges, it has a stench. That’s what I’m sniffing here. A suspicious stench.”

  Molloy was already shaking his head. “I don’t care if you’re sniffing and savoring Evening in Paris on a cheap hooker’s mons pubis, Cooper. This file is mostly bullshit,” he said. “Crackpot stuff. Write a big best-selling book about it if you want. We don’t care. Nobody with a brain pays any attention to this stuff. It’s National Enquirer territory.”

  Cooper persisted. “Then why is this attached to the Soviet stuff? These files are Warren witnesses who die prematurely. How does that link to the Russians?”

  “I don’t arrange the files,” Molloy said. “you’d have to direct that question higher up.”

  “Can you do that for me?” said Cooper.

  “Nope. Not a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “The first reason is that if I ask, they’ll throw you out.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Some other well-educated well-positioned people who work here.”

  “Screw you, Molloy.”

  “I’m glad you understand.”

  Chapter 44

  That evening, Molloy returned to the same file. He re-read the entry of Jack Ruby, who had died less than a year earlier. Ruby was the final entry.

  Ruby was the local strip club manager who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald on live television two days after Oswald had been arrested for killing Kennedy. Ruby claimed to have shot Oswald in order to “redeem” Dallas and spare Jackie Kennedy the agony of a trial. But these motives remain shrouded in contradictions. Las Vegas mobster Johnny Roselli claimed Ruby, an occasional organized crime associate, had been assigned to silence Oswald.

  In prison in 1965, Ruby spoke about the murder: “The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the facts come out.”

  In 1966, Ruby claimed that he had been visited by a man who injected him with what he was told were antibiotics for a chronic cold, but which he believed were really cancer cells. He had just been granted a new trial on the grounds that his first trial in Dallas could not have been fairly heard. In late 1966, Ruby told a prison psychiatrist that the assassination was a coup d’etat and that he knew who was responsible for Kennedy’s murder. On January 3, 1967, Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism, a complication of lung cancer.

  Cooper finished the file of premature deaths. The House Select Committee on Assassinations had looked for possible foul play in all forty-nine cases. It found none. Cooper was closing the file when at the end, he noted a curious signoff as an examiner’s note.

  “What did any of these people expect?” the examiner wrote. “Darwinism in action, and in the case of that bitch-snitch Dorothy Kilgallen, a civic improvement. A great way to improve the fabric of American society is to snuff a few nosy reporters. It keeps the rest of them honest and obedient. There’s too much press freedom out there. Cheers ever after! GTH34761”

  Toward eight p.m., Cooper returned to his hotel, had dinner, and fell asleep on the sofa in his room. Several hours later, the tapping at Cooper’s door came softly at first, then was louder.

  It roused him out of a sleep in his dark room. Then there was a voice, gentle and soft. Female.

  He was on his feet the second he recognized it. He went to the door and threw it open.

  “Hey!” he said.

  “Hey, yourself,” Lauren said, bleary-eyed. “You owe me a hundred bucks. Here’s what you wanted,” she said. They kissed and embraced. She handed him an envelope from an overnight bag and stood by the door.

  She traipsed into the room. She tossed the overnight bag onto a chair. He closed the door. She slid her shoes off. She sat on the edge of the bed and lay back. “Damn!” she said. “What a drive. I used your car, by the way.”

  She fished in the pocket of her skirt and found his keys. She flipped them back to him. He caught them on the fly. She lay back on the bed. “Sorry to wake you up,” she said.

  “Not a problem. Great to see you. Thanks.”

  As Lauren relaxed and closed her eyes, Cooper tore open the envelope. Within it, he found a three-by-five photograph—a head shot of a man, just as he had requested.

  Cooper stared at it for a moment, then laughed. Where she had found an old picture of S. W. Murphy, he had no idea. But what she had was perfect. He reached for a ballpoint pen, turned over the photograph and wrote the file and index number of David Charles's photograph within his CIA file. He stared at what he had done.

  No good, he thought. The picture looks too new. That was the one thing wrong with it.

  He considered it for a moment, then borrowed a trick from a counterfeiter he had once met, a man who needed his freshly printed money to look “old” very quickly.

  Cooper opened a can of cola and poured some in a glass. He diluted it with tap water. He immersed the picture for sixty seconds, dried it, then repeated the procedure, three times, handling the photograph roughly so that it would show wear as well as discoloration. He dried it carefully and put it in his jacket pocket. Finally, he had it the way he wanted.

  He turned back to Lauren. She was sleeping soundly. He adjusted the bed covers on her to make sure she was comfortable. Then he slid in next to her and slept.

  Chapter 45

  Peggy Hubbell walked by herself along a wide stretch of sand on Fort Myers Beach. She wore a T-shirt and a pair of yellow shorts, a towel draped across her shoulders. Blue skies. Clear water. The heat had relented along the coast of Florida.

  This hour, just after nine a.m., was the time of day that s
he had come to appreciate most, the daily window that she had to herself. Her step-daughter was at school. Her husband was at work. She had learned to use these hours to get some fresh air and exercise.

  Like other mornings, she had parked her car near the beach pavilion that sold sandwiches, hot dogs and soda. She had run two miles and walked a third. She was feeling good. Returning toward her car, having completed a good workout, she saw Allan.

  At first, he was no more than the figure of a stranger who had pulled a car into a parking spot near hers. Then as she approached, she realized that there was a familiar stance to the man. He wore a beige summer suit, but the jacket was off, folded over his thick forearms. He was leaning against the hood of his car, watching her.

  Who the hell did he think he was dropping back into her life like this! There had been a final chapter to their relationship! Couldn't he understand that?

  She felt her resentment building as she walked toward him. Her car key was in her hand. This was no chance meeting. She wanted to conclude it quickly.

  He smiled at her when she was within twenty feet. “Hello,” he said amiably.

  “Don't you take a hint?” she demanded. “I want nothing to do with you!”

  “You've made that all very clear,” he answered.

  She stared at him angrily. She bolted toward her car. He grabbed her by the arm.

  “Allan,” she said furiously, barely containing her temper. “I can break that grip of yours. I've had the same training as you. Want me to put you through your car windshield?”

  He relaxed his grip on her arm. She pulled her arm away. “I've come hundreds of miles. Please hear me out,” he said.

  She drew a breath and looked toward her former lover. Her nerves settled slightly.

  “You have one minute,” she told him.

  “‘Mr. Carman,’” he said. “That's what you and I called the deceased. Remember? The mystery man? The gent who was dead in the car?”

  She felt as if her worst nightmare had suddenly leaped out into the daylight. The terror crept slowly around her like a snake. Mr. Carman. She exhaled in deep disgust.

  “People are starting to ask questions,” Allan said.

  “Americans? Russians?” she asked.

  “I can only guess. They've come around. They don't identify themselves. You know how they work.” He paused. “Have you ever talked to anyone about the case?” Allan asked her.

  She shook her head. “Not since I started a new life.”

  “Not with your husband? Any friends?”

  “No one!”

  “That's good,” he said. “You shouldn't talk to anyone. Especially now. It won't help you, the man who died or anyone else. And you'd endanger yourself and your family.”

  She looked him squarely in the eye. “Are you here to threaten me?” she asked.

  “I know I hurt you. I know you hate me. But I never did it intentionally. You have to understand,” he said. “It was never me that made any waves about ‘Mr. Carman.’ It was you. That's why they'll leave me alone. And that's why you have to be careful.” He paused. “You're the one who was threatening to talk to newspapers.”

  “So that's why you're here?”

  “I came here to warn you,” he said evenly. “You wouldn't answer my letters. I'm concerned about your safety.”

  “I never wanted any part of this,” she said.

  “None of us did.”

  For a moment, her eyes settled on something more pleasant: a sailboat on the horizon. When he spoke again, her gaze shifted back to him.

  “Do you still have a gun?” he asked.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “You were a nuisance back when ‘Mr. Carman’ died. We're dealing with people who never play by anyone's rules. So why should they play by any rules now?”

  The expression on her face was collapsing in fear. He could see it.

  “No,” she answered. “I don't keep an arsenal in the house. I have a step-daughter.”

  “You might make a change in that situation. You might find yourself something. Please. Take some precautions.” He paused awkwardly. “If I can help you…”

  She shook her head. “Just go away,” she said.

  Allan nodded. He leaned to her and kissed her on the forehead. She remained too stunned to even resist him.

  “Goodbye, Peggy,” he said. “I won't see you again. Please protect yourself.”

  Chapter 46

  George C. Wallace was home in Alabama, gleefully anticipating the final stretch of the Presidential campaign. Wallace continued to run well in the national polls. In a three-way contest, Wallace polled more than forty percent across the south from Texas to North Carolina.

  The Republicans were hysterical. They badly needed the South plus the West to win the White House. With Wallace in the picture, they weren't going to win either. But the Democrats weren't in any better shape. They bravely made noises about Wallace's three-way strategy backfiring on him. With two conservatives in the race, they argued, Hubert Humphrey would inherit the liberal vote, which, petrified of Wallace, would turn out in numbers. Thus they would have a shot at getting the middle ground of the electorate as well.

  But Wallace was encroaching on this middle ground. Ohio and Pennsylvania, for example, were hardly centers of extremism. Yet Wallace was flirting with 36 percent solid in those states, too. That was enough to win in November with the other candidates in the high twenties. The remainder was undecided.

  “All of this underscores the obvious,” wrote Martin Friedkin in that day’s New York Eagle. “The American political system no longer produced Roosevelts, Wilsons, or Lincolns, much less Washingtons or Jeffersons. It produces petty little men like Warren Harding, Spiro Agnew, Huey Long, Richard Nixon and George Wallace. This could be the year for a latter-day Manchurian Candidate to game the Electoral College with an election day inside straight of dumb rural states. Let us all hope to hell that we don't all go goose-stepping into the year 1969.”

  Some other commentators also pronounced the year 1968 as the official end of the American empire, the watershed date when the nation finally took too literally the old belief that “anyone can be elected President.”

  It was a fine time for George Wallace. The river was rising for his enemies and they were desperately looking for sandbags. It was also a time when he could preside over a Methodist barbecue in Texas and cherish his rise in the national opinion polls.

  The commentators in the press who wrote adverse things about him would have been horrified to know what happened at the barbecue. Deke Moreland, one of Wallace’s money guys whom Wallace didn’t know personally, arrived with two attaché cases stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. Moreland had been raising money in the American intelligence and petroleum communities, both of whom were pleased with the flow of events. They’d been on a happy roll since the JFK assassination and their bankrolls were as loose as their libidos and their thirst.

  The attaché cases contained six hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars. The money was given to Jerry Huddleston, now known as “the banker for the bundlers.”

  The candidate himself never knew of the money or its province. But it went into the Dallas Bank of Commerce into an unmarked, unchecked campaign account. It would continue some of those tv buys and big rallies, like a newly booked one in New York at Madison Square Garden, which was now confirmed with that delivery of cash.

  Chapter 47

  Later that morning, Cooper drove back to the CIA. At the reading room for the Soviet Registry, Mr. Ludlow's head rose in the usual manner: one long, slow inquiring motion, narrowed eyes peering above the glasses. Mr. Ludlow’s line repeated on him like the previous evening's bowl of Texas chili: If anything's missing, we don't hesitate to arrest and prosecute, mister.

  Cooper spent the morning and early afternoon reviewing the files on Angleton, Nosenko, and Golitsyn. In the early afternoon, he went to the cafeteria, braced himself with some coffee and returned. His business was finished
. What he had on his mind now was larceny.

  Butterflies? Instead of Monarchs fluttering in his stomach, he felt like he had a couple of crows circling a roost. He filed a new requisition slip for the Rudawski file and returned with it to Reading Table 12. He hung his jacket over the rear of his chair.

  Each time Ludlow looked up, Cooper appeared studiously at work. Eventually, Cooper reached to the right-side pocket of his jacket. He found the photo of S.W. Murphy. Keeping his hand in his pocket, Cooper worked the photo up the cuff of his shirt. He lifted his gaze. No one had noticed. Only the surveillance camera bothered him now.

  He reached into the file material for the photograph of David Charles. He took it in his right hand. He slid his arm in across the file, and the Murphy picture came free of his cuff. He returned his hand to his right pocket and dropped the David Charles picture inside. He brought his hand out again and tidied the file before him as if nothing had happened. He could hear his heartbeat. He looked around. He wondered what was on the other side of the closed-circuit camera. A tape storage unit or several live watchers?

  He killed another twenty minutes on the file. His anxiety level rose. He wondered how many years in a federal prison theft of a CIA document would land a newsman. He reassembled the file, set it in chronological order to give Mr. Ludlow less to think about, rose and approached the front desk. He stood before Ludlow and handed back the file.

  “I'm finished,” Cooper said.

  “Everything back within? Perfect order?”

  “Yes.” Cooper felt a bead of sweat roll down from his left armpit.

  “Well, let's have us a look then,” Ludlow said.

  Ludlow opened the to its inventory sheet. He cruised through the file's contents. He went through three reports in a matter of seconds. His eye was keen for this sort of thing, Cooper realized, keener than Cooper had imagined. Ludlow found a pair of pages out of order, an unintentional error by Cooper. There was no fooling this man, Cooper now told himself. Sneaking this dummy photo past him will be like trying to sneak a pork chop past a wolf. Cooper wondered which prison he would land in. Keep him talking, Cooper said to himself. Any distraction will help, you have to keep him talking. “Damned hot outside, isn't it?” Cooper said.