“No, I do not. We’ve been at the same places, receptions, cocktail parties. I’ve seen him at various functions. But no, I never met him until today.”
“See, that’s what I mean!” the President said slapping his hands together.
“You want to know why he called me ‘Dr. Devereaux’, right?”
“Yeah, I sure do. What’s that all about? What’s he know about you?”
“I think it just means the British have a decent roster, adequate intelligence and Curtis-Moore’s been around a long while. He’s got a good memory.”
“Nothing more than that?” asked the President. “Really?”
“I think so. But Levine’s a different question. They know something about him. They may be aware of Lacey’s document. If so, there must be something in it they don’t want known. Maybe it’s just Kennedy. Perhaps there’s something else. We’re not sure, yet, but they do want Levine—enough to maybe implicate him in a double murder.”
The President said he had a plan. That was before Curtis-Moore rearranged the pieces on the board. Now, it didn’t look like he was as confident as he was a little while ago. Devereaux was thinking while the President was worrying.
“Levine won’t be at his phone—not anymore,” Devereaux said. “You can’t call him back. He’ll have to call you again. He’s on the run, but he’s still in London, probably still in the neighborhood. He might have walked over to the Embassy, thinking it was safe there. The place must be crawling with cops, Scotland Yard, MI6 people. Levine could never get inside. So, he’s out there, somewhere. He’ll get to a phone. He’ll call. We wait.”
“And then what?” asked the President.
“When he calls, let me talk to him.”
The President said nothing more for a long time. A minute or two of total silence with only two people in a room always seems much longer. He did not look pleased. Finally, he said, “Listen to me, Louis. Take care of this situation, understand?” With that he opened the door to his private bathroom and disappeared. Louis Devereaux had no response. None was required. This President—he wasn’t Truman or Kennedy—but he made himself understood. T. S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral” rumbled through Louis’s mind. “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest!”
“I’m leaving. Today. This afternoon. I just wanted to tell you.” Walter said it loud enough so both Ike and Billy could hear him. It was an unusual announcement. “Be gone a little while, but I’ll be back, you understand?” Billy was rearranging a rack of wine glasses. He grunted something that sounded like “Okay.”
“Where you going?” asked Helen. Billy shot her a look that made her sorry she opened her mouth; sorry she couldn’t take it back. Walter offered no reply. A moment of tense, if not uncomfortable, silence followed. Finally, Ike broke through it.
“Some Japanese guy offered the Beatles something like 30 or 40 million,” he said. “They didn’t come back.”
“I think we done this already,” Billy said pointedly to the old man. Helen wanted to say something—that was pretty clear by the way she stood there, behind the bar with her hands firmly on her hips—ready to fire away, but she held her guns.
“Dumbest thing I ever seen was that fool tried to fly around the world in some kind of fancy ass balloon.” Ike said that and then coughed when he exhaled. “You see that balloon? Fell like a rock.”
“Me,” Billy said, still pushing empty glasses into neat rows, “I can never figure out those people who climb Mt. Everest. I mean why would you do that? Don’t get me wrong. I can see the first guy. Just the first guy. The others, it’s just stupid.”
“I guess every man got to do what he got to do,” Ike said. “It’s just that sometimes what it is he’s got to do don’t make any sense. It’s simple. Stupid, that’s all.”
“I’m leaving this afternoon,” Walter repeated. “And, I’ll be back.”
Billy had nothing to say. Helen, finally realizing there was something going on among the three of them, kept silent. Ike inhaled and coughed again. This time he needed a napkin. Smoke slithered out the sides of his covered mouth while he spit out something wet and ugly. Walter glanced over and for a moment thought Ike’s ears were on fire. The old man tried to say something, but nothing came out. When he stopped coughing, he just shook his head a little and went back to doing nothing.
Walter tried hard not to think about it, to no avail. The first time he sat in the same seat, in Frogman’s, he was no more than thirty-something. He was forty when Billy took the joint over. Prime of his life. How had so much time passed so quickly? It seemed unfair. He remembered all the way back, a million years ago, when he was in Saigon. The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction. He could hear it again. An anthem. He didn’t know it then—he’d never even heard of a metaphor—but later he saw clearly, the song was all about Vietnam. “I can’t get no—I can’t get no—Satisfaction.” Vietnam. Mick Jagger did an interview, Walter remembered, not long after the record was released in 1965. He saw it again, now, sitting in Billy’s. It was as clear in his mind’s eye as it had been, then on TV. There was Mick, just a kid. In his heavily accented, staccato rhythm, he was saying, “I can’t see myself singing Satisfaction when I’m . . . thirty-five, you know.” Youthful perspective is such horseshit, thought Walter. Could he, at twenty-five, have seen himself, airplane ticket in his pocket, bag packed, ready to head out on another search, thirty-five years later? He didn’t want to think about it. Too much time had gone by. Too many memories. He thought about her. Gloria. “Glor-re-a, my Glor-or-ree-a.” The Cadillacs played their scratchy harmony in his head and in his heart. Then Isobel. He was thinking about Isobel. “Oh, fuck!” he said to himself. “I’ve got to stop this shit.”
“Mountains is mountains,” Ike proclaimed, pointing to Billy, not letting Mt. Everest rest. “And you can forget about that stupid balloon. No, I’m telling you the dumbest thing ever was putting that Cindy Birdsong in the Supremes. Absolute dumbest.” Then the old man mumbled something about Patti LaBelle.
“I’ll stay with the climbing,” said Billy. “And, forget about Everest. It’s not just that one. I’m talking all climbing. Take a plane, why don’t you. Dumbest thing ever—mountain climbing.” They both looked at Walter. His plate was empty. No eggs, no toast. Maybe an inch remained of his Diet Coke. One swallow, that’s all. He played with the bottle, turning it around, spinning it slowly with the fingers of both hands. He saw them staring at him.
“New Coke,” he said. “Dumbest thing ever.”
Billy let out a belly laugh, so loud it brought Helen in out of the kitchen to see what was the matter. He practically ran over to the board, grabbed the piece of chalk and, in capital letters, wrote: CINDY BIRDSONG/MOUNTAIN CLIMBING/NEW COKE, laughing all the while.
Harry wanted nothing more than to go home. All the way home, to Roswell. He’d abandoned his Soho flat. It was a dangerous place to be. Once he heard the news about Sir Anthony, he knew he was in danger. Whoever killed the old man was looking for exactly what Harry had—the Lacey Confession. The President of the United States told him to sit tight and wait for his return call. But he had to leave his apartment. The President of the United States was going to call him! and he would not be there when he did. He was on edge. He’d read some of Lacey’s confession, the confession of a dead man. Why did he insist it be released to the public? It was designed, it seemed to Harry, for only one purpose—revenge. From the grave, Frederick Lacey meant to inflict more damage on the Kennedys. He killed them all, thought Harry. He killed them all! Who else was there to hurt? And, who would be afraid if the whole world knew? Who needed to stop it so badly they would murder for it? The Kennedys, or what’s left of them? Whoever it was, Harry knew he was now as much a target as the confession itself. Did Lacey have any idea his confession would prove this disastrous? Murder. Did he foresee the chaos? Could it be that’s what he wanted? Harry didn’t know, couldn’t know and Sir Anthony could shed no light on the question—not anymore. There was no time t
o waste. He had to get out, get away. He packed a small bag, took the Lacey document, and fled. He beat the police by less than five minutes.
The American Embassy was surrounded by the English authorities. The grounds themselves were American property, sovereign territory immune from English law, but he had to get inside to be safe. Only inside. All the entrances were guarded, even the few nobody was supposed to know about. Harry had no chance of getting back in. The rain that fell all day had drifted to a drizzle. The cold air did not warm with the afternoon. There was no late day sun. He was cold and damp. He needed to call the President back himself. The President would have an answer for all this. Certainly he would. Maybe the President tried to get him on the phone already and he wasn’t there. What would he have thought? “Christ!” muttered Harry. He so badly wished he was downstairs in his house in Roswell, Georgia. He longed to hear Aunt Sadie calling him to dinner. He missed his mother. She would know what to do. He was positive of that. She would never stand to see her son stranded on the street, in the cold, in the rain, a million miles from home. He turned and started walking toward St. James’s Square, where he stopped and found a public telephone.
“Please, Iden . . .”
“Albertson, is that you?”
“Mr. Levine?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll put you through.”
“Thank you,” said Harry.
“Levine,” said the President, almost immediately. “Where are you?”
“In a small café near St. James’s Square.”
“They want to talk to you.”
“I know. They’re all over the place.”
“We’re going to get you in, Harry, okay?”
“Yes. Sure, Mr. President.”
“I’m going to put someone on this line. His name is Louis Devereaux. I want you to do whatever he tells you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” With that, the next voice Harry heard was Louis Devereaux’s.
“Don’t worry, Harry. I’ve got it all under control. I need you to believe me.” It was as much a plea as anything else.
“Okay,” Harry mumbled.
“Do you have it?” When Harry gave no reply, Devereaux said it again. “Do you have it?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Have you read it?”
“Yes. Some of it.”
“About Kennedy?”
“Yes.”
“About others too?”
“Yes. I saw lots of names, going back many years. Lenin. Hitler. King Edward. Lots of them. I didn’t read it all. The Czar, too.”
“The Second?”
“What?”
“Czar Nicholas the Second?”
“Yes. Look, how can I . . . ?”
“There’s an Indian restaurant,” Devereaux spoke over him. “It’s called The Standard. It’s on Westbourne Grove. Go there. You know where that is?”
“Yes. Go when?”
“Thirty minutes. When you get there, the owner will have a message for you. He’s an old man, heavy set, white hair. Indian, of course. He’ll be expecting you. Did you get that?”
“Yes. What kind of message will he have?”
“Just take whatever he gives you and follow the instructions.”
“And then?”
“Harry, trust me.”
“Yes, sir.” Harry said it, but he was far from sure. To Devereaux, how Harry felt didn’t matter. He knew the sound of obedience to the chain of command.
“Good. Now go,” he said. Harry was left holding a dead phone. The ISCOM connection was broken.
Louis Devereaux looked at the President and wondered what this guy would do without him. “I’ve got some things to take care of, Mr. President,” he said. “I’m sure you do too.” He started to walk out, but the President called after him.
“Louis. What are you going to do?” He pointed at the phone,the one Devereaux had just used to speak with Harry Levine.
“I’ll arrange for someone to meet him,” Devereaux said.
“And then what?”
And then what? Louis tried to contain his disbelief, his disgust. Asshole! Again he thought of T. S. Eliot. Will no one rid me of this troublesome President? Louis Devereaux just smiled and said, “I’ll take care of it.” A few minutes later he was talking to The Bambino.
Years ago, Devereaux emerged from the back offices at Langley mainly because of George Bush, the Father. When the Soviet empire collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity, Bush was caught off guard. At a meeting in the White House Situation Room, he gave his top intelligence people a piece of his mind. Few Presidents—even LBJ—have yelled louder and used as much profanity as Bush did that day. He was pissed and no excuse or explanation soothed his fury. The Russian bear was sick to dying and still they kept telling him it would be okay. Gorbachev would pull it together. But it wasn’t happening that way at all. The bear looked like Winnie the Pooh.
“Isn’t there anyone at your headquarters,” he screamed, pointing at the CIA delegation in the room, “who has a goddamn brain in their head? Do you all have shit for brains? Didn’t anybody have anything to say about what might happen to the Russians? They fell apart, goddamnit! They fell apart! And not a single sonofabitch at your place had a fucking clue? Nobody?”
“Mr. President,” one of the CIA crew spoke up. “We did have a report—a long time ago—years ago, from Devereaux. We all thought he was a bit over the top. I read it myself and thought he was nuts. I guess . . . in retrospect . . .”
“Devereaux? Who the fuck is Devereaux?” demanded Bush 41.
It turned out that Devereaux had written and distributed a paper, read by some in the highest circles of the Agency, in which he flatly predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union. He’d been told to analyze the possibilities for Soviet growth to the end of the century, and he did. They wouldn’t see it, he said—the end of the century. He knew all along it was make-work and wasn’t at all surprised when no one paid any attention to his conclusions. The Soviet Union would, he claimed, disintegrate and disappear without a fight. He put the chance of armed rebellion, from any republic, at less than ten percent. The Soviet military complex was doomed, he said, done in by incompetence and corruption. The Eastern European states, as well as the Muslim republics of Central Asia, would soon reject their continued union with the Russians—and they would get away with it. It would not be Hungary or East Germany all over again, Devereaux wrote. No tanks in the streets, not outside Russia. He put the probability of a Russian invasion of any rebellious republic at absolute zero. The Soviet military was a paper tiger, flimsy paper at that. In fact, he saw a unified Germany as a catalyst in this movement. “The Wall will fall,” he wrote, with a bit of a smile at the time. The Soviet Union had ten to fifteen years left, he prophesized. Although outside his purview, he even expressed some doubt about the fundamental capacity of their nuclear arsenal. What’s most significant, Devereaux wrote this paper while Jimmy Carter was President. Once Bush was told about this, he was eager to see “this analyst no one paid any goddamn attention to.” Nobody at the table moved when the President was finished. Bush stood up, looked at them and shouted again. “Get him over here! Now!” He mumbled something about Devereaux being “a beacon in a pitch-black shithouse.”
That was Devereaux’s first time in the Oval Office. It was a long and productive meeting. With the Soviet Union folding its tent, adjustments were necessary and he told the President all about them.
“We have people, throughout Europe and quite a few in Russia herself, and the other former republics as well,” he told Bush. “These are people who were of use to us in the last forty years. Many of them, the vast majority of them, never left the other side. They’re still there. In addition, there are quite a few, among our friends, who helped us without their government’s knowledge. Many of these people—agents, spies, informers, collaborators—know things about us, things that could be damaging if they became widely known. Some things, even small bits of perso
nal information, might someday be used as blackmail. What I’m saying is, there’s a population walking around out there who could embarrass us and hinder us in our new agenda.”
“People who couldn’t talk before,” Bush began.
“Because it was too dangerous.”
“But they can now. Right?”
“Precisely, Mr. President. I am talking about people who no longer offer us any benefit. They present only a downside risk.” When this conversation started, there were two other people also in the Oval Office. Devereaux didn’t know either of them, but made one for a secretary and the other an aide of some sort. Bush looked over and waved them from the room. Then they were alone, Louis Devereaux and the President of the United States.
“Why are you telling me this?” asked Bush, this time in a more casual, conversational tone the nature of which was clearly intended to put Devereaux at ease—a sign of respect for him from the President. The touch was not lost on Louis who had used the same device many times himself. “What do you have in mind?” Bush asked.
Devereaux laid it all out. The United States needed to eliminate dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people associated with covert activities during the Cold War. Some were enemies then, and still might be. Others were friends, friends who knew things they shouldn’t. Each of them—especially with such a large number of them—was a possible danger. Every one of them had to be dealt with. Devereaux was not one to beat around the bush. “They needed to be killed,” he said. Then he proposed setting up a special network of agents to accomplish this task.
The Lacey Confession Page 14