“How old was he, Churchill?” asked Billy.
“Just a kid,” laughed Ike. “No more than—how old are you, Walter?” Walter laughed too. Ike knew Walter wasn’t as old as Churchill. “‘Saved the world from the fucking Nazis,” said Ike. “That’s good. That’s very good. I like that. Had some help, though. I oughta know.”
“You want me to write it up?”
“Yes sir, Billy,” said Ike. “You write it. Walter? You see any Nazis around here? You want to check the men’s room? Maybe they all at Caneel Bay.” Again the old man laughed and this time he began coughing again.
Billy looked to Walter for the go-ahead. Walter nodded, and the pale-skinned, stubble-jawed bartender grabbed the chunk of blue chalk and wrote—Louis/Mays/Churchill—on the blackboard.
Just then, Helen opened the kitchen door, directly across from Walter’s seat at the bar. She emerged carrying a large plastic bottle filled with a pink liquid. She needed two hands to hold it. She put it down under the bar, near the small ice maker and cooler, looked up at Walter, like she knew something he’d overlooked, and said, “She’s got a great ass, but she’s no German.”
When the phone rang—even The Phone—he picked it up and answered with a simple, “Yes.”
“Hey Louis,” said the President of the United States. “I got to see you. Get over here right away.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Louis Devereaux replied, careful not to say anything more. At 54, he was a thirty-year veteran at the CIA. His current job title, Assistant Director for Regional Operations, was a bogus title. He’d had a dozen or more similar ones over the years. The Act that created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1949 exempted the agency from having to disclose its table of organization, job descriptions or even the number of people who worked there. Devereaux had begun with a real job, as an Analyst, but as he gained reputation and authority his job titles became less reflective of his real duties. It was doubtful more than one or two Senators would recognize the name and even they might scratch their heads and say something like “Devereaux. Devereaux . . . I know that name . . . just can’t seem to place it exactly . . .” Not a one of his titles required their consent. Within a small group at the CIA—those who really know the speed and direction the wheel spins, those whose hands actually guide its progress and call its turns—Louis Devereaux eventually became a leader. By the time the President called him that day, he was the unquestioned top at CIA. Of course, he was not the Agency man who dutifully appeared to testify before committees of the Congress, or on the Sunday TV news shows, and surely not the bureaucrat who served as chief administrator. Louis Devereaux made policy, for the Agency, for the country, for the world.
The thirty-nine rich, white men who met privately in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the Constitution favored “Your Excellency” when referring to their new creation—the President of the United States. Perhaps George Washington’s greatest contribution to the budding republic was his resolve to be called Mr. President. He saw that title as an indicator of common citizenship. Washington was well aware that in a representative government, a government of laws not of men, separating the man from the title was essential. He meant Mister to be the most simple of callings. Many of those men, gathered in Philadelphia, thought the office every bit the equal of an elected sovereign, a king minus only primogeniture. Few of the Founding Fathers would be surprised or disappointed by the pomp and circumstance that grew to surround the modern Imperial Presidency. Quite a few surely saw themselves occupying the position and the sound of Your Excellency must have been almost musical. General, then President, George Washington—like Hubert H. Humphrey two hundred years later, a man who would chide would-be President Richard Nixon by saying—“Being President just means free rent for four years!”—understood it was just a job.
Louis Devereaux was also a man who knew the power of titles and the force of names. The youngest child, the only brother to five sisters, he grew up being called Louis, never Lou, never Louie. He never had a nickname. His father, Zane Devereaux, was a small thin man with narrow lips and sharp features, the last surviving male in the family which originated modern banking and finance in the South after the Civil War or, as it was always called in the Devereaux house, the War Between The States. At the height of the Great Depression, Louis’ father relocated the family enterprises from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans. From their base in investment banking, the family ventured into residential real estate development after World War II. In successive later decades, they branched out to include highway construction, electronic communications, office buildings and shopping malls, and eventually low-cost, no-frills regional air transport. Zane Devereaux expanded his family’s fortune from millions to tens of millions and then oversaw its explosion into the hundreds of millions. While Zane guided it, the Devereaux Communications Group owned and operated fourteen radio and television stations in eight major cities in the Deep South, three recently acquired television stations in California, and an ever-increasing network of cellular telephone and data transmission frequencies. The company’s asset value had surpassed the billion-dollar mark years ago. As a testament to Zane Devereaux’s financial genius, all his companies were debt free. “You can be a lender,” he was heard to say more than once. “That’s good business. But, if you want to sleep nights, don’t borrow a goddamn dime!”
As a youngster Louis frequently witnessed grown men—important men, men he often recognized—shake uncontrollably in his father’s presence. They respectfully addressed him as “Sir,” and “Mr. Devereaux,” all the while being called by their first names by him. Louis learned that addressing someone by their first name, especially when they were uncomfortable replying in kind, could nearly always establish a dominant position in personal communications. The added prestige he later acquired with his PhD as “Dr. Devereaux,” taught him the value of titles well applied. As with every lesson ever learned, Louis Devereaux steadfastly used his knowledge to further his self-interest.
He put The Phone down, the blue one sitting alone on top of the small, light-colored marble table under the window—the phone the President had just called him on. He picked up another phone, the one next to the toaster on the red-tiled kitchen island. He pushed a single button, listened for the ring and waited for an answer. “I’m going to miss the game,” he said. “Sorry, Mandy.”
“Well, I’ll just have to tell you all about it later, won’t I?” his sister said. She hung up without any goodbye. She knew who her little brother was. She didn’t expect an explanation and she never asked questions. None of Louis’s sisters did. And neither did his mother. Each of them took great pride in Louis. Zane Devereaux was a different story.
When Henrietta Devereaux, known throughout proper Mississippi society as Hattie, told her husband she was pregnant again in 1950, he was thrilled. Zane Devereaux had no brothers and quite reasonably saw himself as the last of the line. He was already the father of five girls. His own two sisters had six children between them including four boys, not one of which, of course, carried the Devereaux name. Like his sisters had, each of Zane’s daughters would one day marry and surrender that cherished name too. Their sons, if they had any, would be family, but none would be a Devereaux. Not a day passed when Zane was not haunted and humiliated by his greatest fear—that when he died the Devereaux fortune would fall into the hands of strangers. When Louis was born in Louisiana in 1951, Zane’s world was saved. He named his son after his adopted state and never worried again.
Confident now that the family enterprise would remain firmly in true Devereaux control, Zane discovered the freedom to delegate responsibility to others, to outsiders, to employees. What had been a tightly held, close-knit corporation in which Zane himself approved nearly every decision, now opened up to dynamic growth under the direction of skilled hired help. Zane knew banking and had been lucky in real estate after the war with Germany and Japan. In the buyer’s market of the late forties it didn’t hurt to own a bank
or two. He knew investing in the construction of the interstate highway system was a smart move, but he would need to hire people to set it up and run it. He was also smart enough to take the millions thrown off by Devereaux National Construction and buy radio and television stations. But again he needed to hire the right people to operate them. And now that he had a son, an heir, he did. He hired the best in the industry, paid the most money but always resisted releasing equity, taking in partners or going public. More often perhaps than Hattie thought was good for him, Zane looked at his son and said, “Louis, someday it’ll all be yours.”
By the time Louis entered Yale, at the incredible age of sixteen, his father was already preparing his future career. When Louis graduated from Yale, only three years later, Zane was pleased his son was going on to law school. There were already too many lawyers with too much influence making too much trouble for him every day. Zane was sure he would feel a lot more comfortable working side by side with his son—the attorney. But when Louis chose the University of Chicago Law School instead of LSU or Tulane, Zane Devereaux became concerned. At first, he kept it to himself. Louis was young—time was on his side.
Three years later, twenty-two-year-old Louis took his law degree and instead of going home, returned to Yale, this time to pursue a PhD in European History. His father was not happy. Still, he waited. When he was only twenty-four years old, Louis Devereaux—now both lawyer and doctorate—heir to the family fortune, broke his father’s heart. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency. The strain between the two never healed. Zane Devereaux died carrying both his pain and anger to the grave.
He left everything to Louis. He was, in spite of everything, his son. His only son. Louis sold all the Devereaux holdings and split the proceeds evenly with his sisters and mother. By age thirty, Louis Devereaux was a man completely free of personal commitments as well as conflicting economic interests. While very much the ladies’ man, he had not married, and never would. Every penny he had was in cash. He often thought of John Lennon’s comment when the former Beatle was asked if he was afraid of Richard Nixon and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which harassed him and tried hard to have him deported. Lennon said he was not afraid at all. “I’ve got more money than they do.”
Fifteen minutes after their brief phone call, Devereaux entered the Oval Office to find the President alone. “Good morning,” he said.
“You need some coffee?” asked the President. “Something to eat? Help yourself, Louis.” He pointed to a tray loaded with breakfast cakes and doughnuts. Both coffee and tea were available in matching silver servers. The President’s favorite mugs, featuring the particularly ugly mascot from his alma mater, were neatly stacked next to the milk and sugar and artificial sweetener. Devereaux could have anything he wanted. He knew that. Eggs, sausage, pancakes, steak, anything—all he had to do was pick up the phone and order it. He poured some coffee and sat down on a couch to the President’s left. Presidents change, he thought, but the Oval Office remains pretty much the same. Same blue carpet, similar desks, a couple of small tables and side chairs and usually two couches. The unique shape of the room pretty much dictates the furnishings. He first came to the Oval Office in 1990 and by now he felt very much at home there.
“I got this call, from London, from a guy named Harry Levine. He’s Foreign Service, a lawyer in the Trade Section. Well, he calls me on the ISCOM . . .” The President paused, lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. “Christ, Louis, this is goddamn unbelievable . . .”
“Just tell me what he said,” Devereaux suggested, hoping to get the President started in the right direction, calm him down a bit. The first George Bush was the only one, he thought, who didn’t go nuts every time there was some kind of crisis. He’d much rather deal with a professional like that, but of course, he had no choice. You could pick your friends, but not your Presidents. “How did Harry Levine get access to ISCOM?”
“None of your goddamn business,” laughed the President.
“What?”
“That’s what he said. ‘None of your goddamn business!’ Can you believe that?” the President chuckled. “Geez, I shouldn’t laugh. This is serious—if it’s even true. The whole thing is so damned unreal.”
“Just tell me what he said,” Devereaux said again. The President, who had been standing all the while, moved toward his desk and sat down.
“Levine took a call this morning for Ambassador Brown, who’s not there today. Goes to see a lawyer at Herndon, Sturgis, Wells & Nelson—top London firm, very prestigious—a Sir Anthony Wells. Wells is a real legend, must be well up in his nineties. He gives Levine a document, part of the estate papers of Frederick Lacey. You familiar with Frederick Lacey, Lord Lacey?”
“Yes,” replied Devereaux, a chill running down his back. Quickly, he adjusted his suit jacket, hoping the President would not notice the flush he felt in his cheeks. “He died earlier this week.”
“Yeah, Tuesday to be exact. Good memory, Louis. Well, he left this document with instructions to release it after he was dead. It says he killed President Kennedy.” Devereaux said nothing. He prayed his inner turmoil was not evident. The President continued. “You know anything about Lacey and Kennedy?”
He sat there, looked directly at the President, sipped his coffee and reported without benefit of either preparation or notes. “Frederick Lacey,” said Devereaux, “and Joseph P. Kennedy were running buddies in the twenties and thirties.”
Devereaux plainly saw the President was already impressed. Anybody would be, he thought. “Irish whiskey, French and Italian wine, English gin and Russian vodka—together they brought it all here. Lacey had the ships and handled the European side. He delivered mostly to Cuba, sometimes to Haiti. Never touched American or Canadian soil. Kennedy distributed the goods here using various organized crime families as transportation and security, and of course they were also his primary customers. Lacey’s end probably shows up as legitimate. I’m sure he’s got the papers to prove it, if you can believe the Cubans drank all that themselves.” Devereaux ran down Lacey’s early history, including his exploits during World War One and the famous meeting in Lisbon where he met his wife.
“Not a man with many friends,” said Devereaux. “Not the type, but he was close to his father-in-law, very close. Helped him get out when the Red Army overran Georgia. There have been many rumors, stories about Lacey’s adventures—special cargo, gold, diamonds, antiquities, art treasures. His name comes up, if you know what I mean.”
“How much of it’s true?”
Devereaux laughed in a way that made the President think he’d been asked the same question before. “Who knows,” he said.
There was a serious note of respect and admiration in Devereaux’s voice not lost on the President.
“Lacey’s wife died,” Devereaux continued, “in childbirth, 1920. He and Kennedy chased women all across Europe for the next twenty years. Lacey’s daughter—Audrey was her name—committed suicide. Summer of ’40. Kennedy was living in England then. He was our Ambassador from 1937 to 1940. Roosevelt brought him back after some embarrassment with the Germans. Kennedy thought Germany was going to win the war. Lacey meanwhile was quite instrumental in the Allied success in Italy and Eastern Europe. He was Churchill’s connection to both the Mafia and the communist underground. Anyway, Lacey and Kennedy seemed to go their separate ways after the war broke out.”
“You know, Louis, you never fail to impress me. How do you remember all that? Where’s it all come from?”
“It’s just there,” answered Devereaux. “It’s just there.”
“I guess the hell it is,” smiled the President.
Quietly, almost absent-mindedly, Devereaux asked, “Do you remember your seventh-grade geography, Mr. President? The flip side of ‘Earth Angel’? The names of everyone who lived in your freshman dorm? Ted Williams’ lifetime batting average? Your old girlfriend’s telephone number?” The President shook his head and grinned.
“What are
you, kidding?” he laughed.
“I do,” said Louis Devereaux without a sign of a smile.
The President related Harry Levine’s discoveries in full detail, leaving out nothing he had been told. He finished with the news of the death of Sir Anthony Wells. This recitation took most of twenty minutes during which time Devereaux watched as closely as he listened. He had seen the files on all the Presidents since Harry Truman. Most, like this one, preferred to sit when speaking. Only Eisenhower was known to stand and pace on a regular basis. Ford used to play with rubber bands. Truman would grind his teeth. Nixon scratched his ass so often there was more than one foreign intelligence report speculating on various body rashes. Carter had an annoying little wheeze that frequently popped up and Johnson farted, with impunity. Really, he did, remembered Louis. Johnson didn’t give a fuck about anybody. Reagan was rumored to have fallen asleep—more than once—while being briefed. Louis Devereaux knew the rumor to be true. But, foibles aside, they all sat, except Ike.
This President was, by Devereaux’s analysis, an intelligent man, but not too smart. Kennedy and Bush 41 were the most intelligent and each was smart too. Devereaux always felt Clinton’s intellect was overrated, most often by himself. Louis had spent a lot of time with Bush, the father, and held him in high regard. From what he read and learned talking with old-timers in the agency, Lyndon Johnson was widely thought of as the most arrogant President, and to make matters worse, he was not all that bright. He was decisive and he was damn quick with a decision, qualities that could often compensate for a lack of critical analysis. Unless, of course, the decision was wrong and the thing turned out poorly. The scarlet V burned on Johnson’s chest. The best Devereaux learned about Nixon was that he was determined, a real pit-bull, but too often verged on instability and, of course, he lied so no one trusted him. He lied to everybody, silly and unnecessary lies resulting in a lot of enemies and very few friends. Clinton was also a liar, practically pathological, but unlike the doomed Richard Nixon, he was good at it. Truman read the most and needed the most help. Nevertheless, he started the CIA and was therefore, in the eyes of Louis Devereaux, forever a Hero of the Republic. Carter was just a blip on the Presidential screen—here today, gone tomorrow. He was very intelligent, but had not the slightest idea what it meant to be the President of the United States, the most powerful man on the face of the planet.
The Lacey Confession Page 12