Never Forget

by Martin Michaud

“You know why, Paul. Willis may have information that he’s been keeping secret for forty-five years. He won’t come clean to some stranger over the phone. If he’s going to let himself be approached by anyone, it’ll be by someone who knows what he’s talking about. I think I know enough to gain his trust.”

  Delaney laughed softly and drained his coffee. “What if he won’t talk? Or you can’t find him?”

  “That’s a risk,” Victor conceded. “But the address is valid. There’s a Cleveland Willis living there. I checked.”

  Delaney stopped nibbling the rim of his cup and, over his reading glasses, gave the detective sergeant an annoyed look. “I can’t let you go, Vic. The media are on our backs, hoping we’ll find Tousignant alive. How am I supposed to explain that my best detective has gone to Texas? At taxpayers’ expense?”

  Victor looked at Delaney with a small smile, clasping his hands behind his neck. “Easy. First of all, your so-called best detective is a notorious hothead. And then there’s the fact that my son just got mixed up in a terrorist plot. Sick leave, vacation — you’ll find the right turn of phrase. You’re good at that. And I’ll cover my own expenses.”

  Delaney’s scowl left no doubt as to how he felt about the plan.

  “You’ve got the whole team here looking for Tousignant. Let me go down there, Chief. What have we got to lose?”

  Delaney sat up and returned his feet to the carpet. He put the paper clip and earwax-stained tissue in the cup, then dropped the cup into the wastebasket. “I’ll give you two days. That’s it. And stop calling me ‘Chief.’ It’s not like anyone around here actually does what I say.”

  Delaney was only pretending to be an indignant boss, and they both knew it. Victor stood up, clicked his heels, and saluted. “Yes, Chief.”

  “Ah, get outta my face,” Delaney snapped. But there was a smile on his lips.

  79

  AN X ON THE ASPHALT

  Dallas, Texas

  Thursday, December 29th

  Victor took a moment to contemplate the massive glass skyscrapers overlooking the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza, where a cenotaph had been built in honour of the dead president. The commemorative monument consisted of white concrete columns placed side by side to create a roofless cube, nine metres high, divided in two halves by an opening through the middle.

  On the plaque, the detective sergeant read that the monument had been unveiled in 1970, seven years after Kennedy’s death in Dealey Plaza, a few blocks away.

  The architect had designed the structure to be an open memorial, symbolizing John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s openness of mind. Jacqueline Kennedy, who had picked up a piece of her husband’s skull from the limousine’s trunk on the day of the assassination, had personally approved the design.

  Standing on only eight supporting legs, the two concrete half squares seemed to float above the ground, separated from each other by a gap of a few metres. Access to the interior was through this gap. Inside the structure, the only feature was a simple granite block.

  After reading the president’s name in gold letters on the side of the block, Victor raised his head, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand.

  The temperature was fifteen degrees Celsius. In the blue sky, Victor saw the stripes of a four-engine jet’s contrail.

  As Victor walked along the sidewalk edging the plaza, he kept an anxious eye on the street. He set the hands on his watch back an hour to account for the time-zone change. He was about to light another cigarette when he was suddenly assailed by doubt: would the man he was supposed to meet actually show up? Feeling his anxiety level rise, Victor reflexively put a hand to his left side, where his service weapon was normally holstered. But he’d left it in Montreal.

  What could possibly happen to him in a public space in broad daylight? The same thing that happened to Kennedy, breathed a little voice in his brain. To stifle the voice, he shook his head and took a cigarette from the pack.

  His fears were ridiculous!

  Victor’s plane had left Trudeau International at 7:45 that morning. After a direct flight of a little over four hours, the Boeing 737 had touched down at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport at 10:55 local time.

  Having swallowed a tranquilizer before takeoff, he had slept the whole way.

  From the airport, a single phone call had sufficed to set up the meeting. At the other end of the line, a woman’s voice had answered. The detective sergeant had asked to speak to Cleveland Willis. The woman had asked him to hang on a moment. A few seconds later, Victor was speaking to Willis. After introducing himself and explaining that he was with the Montreal Police in Canada, Victor had said, “I’d like to ask you some questions about André Lortie.”

  A long silence had followed those words.

  Victor had pressed on, mentioning the names of Daniel Tousignant and Evergreen. At last, the elderly man had offered to meet him at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza.

  Victor had been ready for anything — ready for Willis to hang up, or to say he didn’t know anyone by that name, or to protest, or to threaten him. Victor had been ready for anything except what had actually happened: he’d gotten his meeting with ease.

  Willis arrived in a white minivan driven by a tall, burly woman in her fifties. She helped him out of the passenger seat, literally taking him in her arms and placing him gently on the sidewalk. He was a small man with diaphanous skin and a sprinkling of age spots on his balding head. His bright green eyes danced behind thin, gold-rimmed glasses. An oxygen tube looped up into his nostrils, and he walked with a cane.

  Victor stepped forward and introduced himself. Willis’s hand disappeared into his own. The woman stood there in front of him, her bulbous eyes looking him up and down, appraising him. Her expression of displeasure made it plain that she didn’t trust him. The old man said something in her ear. She hesitated for a moment, then climbed back into the minivan. She gave Victor one more dark look before driving away.

  “My daughter,” Willis explained. “Since my wife’s death, she’s become very protective.”

  “I understand.” Silence. “Is it bad?” Victor asked, pointing to the oxygen tube.

  Willis made an effort to smile. “The worst.” He pointed toward the concrete box. “Did you get a chance to look inside?”

  The detective sergeant nodded.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Long story.”

  Victor offered him an arm. Willis took it, and they strolled a few metres to the pedestrian street that edged the plaza.

  “Perfect. I love long stories.”

  And there, sitting in the shade of the trees lining South Record Street, Victor told Willis everything he knew. The account took a full half hour.

  Hands crossed over the pommel of his cane, his head slightly bowed, Willis listened closely, letting out an “Mm-hm” of assent from time to time.

  Victor wrapped up by answering the man’s initial question. “Based on the materials I have in hand, I believe Lawson put together a file on Evergreen’s activities, a file that proved Senator Tousignant’s responsibility for the events that led to the violent deaths of three people in 1964. It was in this file that I found your name and address. Lawson had tracked down your whereabouts in 1975, and again in 2003.”

  “Tracked down? I was never in hiding. I sold my house in 2003 after my wife died and moved into a condo. Hence the change of address.”

  “When I mentioned André Lortie and Evergreen over the phone, you agreed to meet me right away, without asking questions. Just now, as I was talking about Lawson, Tousignant, and Harper, I watched your reactions. I got the sense that all those people were known to you. You don’t seem surprised that I’m here. Am I wrong?”

  Willis cleared his throat a few times before raising his owl-like eyes to Victor’s. “I knew that sooner or later someone would come around and ask me about those events. To be honest, though, I didn’t think it would take forty-eight years.”

  “Tell me what you know, Mr. Willis.” />
  “I’ll be happy to. But I warn you now, if you were hoping to get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination, you’re in for a disappointment.”

  At Willis’s request, they walked the short distance to Dealey Plaza, where the assassination took place. They stopped in front of a bronze map showing the route followed by the presidential motorcade on that fateful November 22nd.

  “Dealey Plaza attracts an exceptional variety of people, from ordinary tourists to highly qualified conspiracy theorists,” Willis said, moving his hand in the air to indicate the two extremes. “And then there are the pseudo-experts, hawking their wares.”

  And indeed, Victor could see street vendors calling out to passersby, offering them newsletters and books promising the whole truth about the assassination. But the thing that immediately struck him was the relatively modest size of the area, which, from his memories of the Zapruder film, he’d expected to be bigger.

  The two men approached a red-brick building. According to the old man, the Texas School Book Depository building, from which presumed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had fired on the president, looked essentially the same as it had in 1963. Victor followed the line of Willis’s extended forefinger to the corner window on the sixth floor where the shooter had been hidden. “They’ve turned it into a museum,” Willis grumbled dismissively, “but there’s nothing to see.”

  Ahead and to their right lay the grassy knoll, with a plaque standing on its tiny patch of green, “near the spot where the fatal shot hit the president,” the old man explained. On the ground, a few flowers were swaying in the wind. Victor felt it was simultaneously ghoulish and fascinating to be in this place.

  Willis drew his attention to three white Xs painted on the asphalt of Elm Street, which had been part of the motorcade’s route. “Those are the locations where the bullets struck.”

  Farther down, Victor recognized the entrance ramp to the highway that the limousine had taken to reach the hospital. A man holding a video camera and a microphone with a foam cover asked them in a self-important tone to step aside. He was shooting a documentary about the assassination.

  Victor helped Willis cross the knoll and climb the steps that rose beside it. They sat down. The old man gradually caught his breath before starting to speak again.

  “I was twenty-eight when I joined the CIA. That was in 1961. I was young and idealistic. I’d worked on Kennedy’s senate re-election campaign in 1958 and on his presidential campaign in 1960. For two years, the agency sent me to various countries to oppose Communist activities and promote local democracy. I went to a lot of places: Laos, Paris, Berlin, Latin America. In early 1963, I was posted to the Ottawa embassy as cultural counsellor; then, in May of that year, I was seconded to the consulate in Montreal. I was one of the resources without an official job description. In other words, the consul sometimes knew what I was up to, sometimes not. My job was to watch the Cuban consulate, which was providing cover for the Soviet spy network, the KGB. The FLQ also had links with the Cubans, as well as with French intelligence services. I was responsible for logistics. I was in contact with Daniel Tousignant and Nathan Lawson, who both worked for the same law firm at the time. They had sources at the Cuban consulate, and we’d exchange information. You have to understand that back then, everyone was spying on everyone else. The intelligence trade was a booming business. For the most part, I dealt with Lawson, who was Tousignant’s subordinate. What I didn’t know then, but learned later, was that during the period when I was dealing with him, Tousignant was also working for the agency.”

  Victor’s face betrayed his surprise. “Tousignant worked for the CIA?”

  Willis leaned his cane against the bench, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and began to wipe his glasses. “His code name was Watermelon Man.”

  Images of the mosaic on which Lortie had written those words came into the detective sergeant’s mind.

  Willis looked at him before continuing. “Because of his later career, not many people remember that Tousignant was a decorated war hero. He signed up at the age of twenty and fought in Korea with the Royal 22nd Regiment. It was only when he got home that he completed his legal studies. And it was much later that he began his philanthropic work.”

  Victor took his notebook from his pocket, scribbled a few details, and placed the notebook on his lap.

  “In 1961,” Willis continued, “Tousignant created a corporation, making himself its chairman and chief executive officer. The company’s official activity was organizing trade fairs.”

  “Evergreen.”

  Willis nodded. “That’s right. Evergreen.” The old man coughed and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. “In September of 1964, when the time came to produce the company’s audited financial statements for the fiscal year ending August 31st, one of the auditors discovered an irregularity in the company’s books regarding transactions that had taken place in October and November of 1963. Tousignant and Lawson panicked.”

  The old man had a coughing fit so severe that it bent him over double. He needed more than a minute to collect himself. Crimson-faced, he wiped his mouth once again with his handkerchief, leaving traces of blood on the fabric.

  Once he was sure Willis wouldn’t keel over then and there, Victor went to a newsstand at the corner and bought a bottle of water.

  Thanking him, the retired agent raised the bottle to his lips with a trembling hand and took a few sips. His complexion gradually regained its milky hue. He seemed lost. “Where was I?” he asked, looking at Victor uncertainly.

  “You were talking about an irregularity in Evergreen’s books.”

  The light returned to Willis’s eyes. “Right. Evergreen had transferred funds to a foreign corporation as payment for excavation work done on the grounds of a trade fair that Evergreen was organizing in Berlin. All the paperwork was in order. The excavation firm had provided valid invoices made out to Evergreen, but the auditor’s attention was caught by the amounts involved, which seemed far too high for the nature of the work that had been done.” Willis stopped for a moment, as though wanting to get his thoughts in order before going on. “The auditor started asking questions. Dissatisfied with the answers he got, and suspecting the invoices were inflated, he made inquiries about the excavation firm. His inquiries led him to discover that during the period when the work was supposed to have been carried out, in October of 1963, and on the dates of the bank transfers in October and November, the firm had obtained none of the required regulatory permits, and it possessed neither the heavy trucks nor the equipment necessary for that kind of work. It was only in late November, after the assassination, that a permit was finally issued to the excavation firm.”

  Victor frowned. “It was a fictitious firm, is that it? A shell company?”

  “Precisely. Another CIA-controlled entity.” Willis’s gaze drifted up into the overhanging foliage. “They had moved too fast, without erasing their tracks. Afterward, they’d tried to cover up their mistake by securing the permit. The paper trail was tainted. But no one was supposed to be asking questions. You understand? The accounting firm was already getting brown envelopes.”

  Victor nodded and closed his eyes. “Why did Tousignant and Lawson feel so threatened that they would order the auditor’s execution?”

  Willis put an age-spotted hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Because he’d found a thread, and they were prepared to use any means necessary to prevent him from following that thread to the heart of the operation. They got rid of him before he could discover the truth.”

  “What would he have found?”

  The old man looked into Victor’s eyes, his head rocking slowly. “If he had followed the trail of bank transfers to the excavation company, and then if he’d looked more deeply into that company, its true activities, and its customers, the auditor would eventually have been able to establish a link between Evergreen and certain individuals who had conspired to assassinate President Kennedy. That’s why Tousignant and Lawson were scared.”


  Victor shuddered. “What are you saying, Mr. Willis?”

  “I’ve never possessed the hard evidence that would enable me to prove it conclusively in a court of law, but Evergreen was a front through which the CIA financed political assassinations. What I’m saying is that the agency used Evergreen to pay the shooters who were concealed in Dealey Plaza that day.”

  80

  BLACK OPERATIONS

  Willis was talking steadily. Despite the numerous questions that crowded into Victor’s head, he decided not to interrupt the old man, for fear Willis might fall silent and the source of information might dry up forever. Victor began scribbling feverishly in his notebook, while trying not to miss a word the retired agent said.

  “You have to understand that Evergreen brought together a diverse collection of interests. They were united by a single cause: the struggle against Communism. Among the more notable members, there was a former Hungarian prime minister known for his anti-Communist and anti-Castro views, a lawyer representing an influential U.S. senator with suspected Mob links, an uncle of the Egyptian king, a New York Mafia godfather, a powerful Austrian government minister who might once have been a former Nazi collaborator, and Clay Shaw, who was eventually prosecuted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Shaw had close links with both pro- and anti-Castro elements. All of these people had their own reasons for wanting Kennedy dead. But I’m not going to go into that. It would be pure speculation. I’ll stick to what I actually saw. As I was saying, for reasons you now know, Tousignant and Lawson panicked when the accountant discovered a financial irregularity. What was supposed to be a routine audit suddenly threatened the entire structure. You spoke to me earlier about Project MK-ULTRA, which came up a few times in your investigation …”

  Victor nodded to encourage the old man to continue.

  “What most people don’t know is that when McGill University abandoned the program in 1964, Judith Harper had already taken over from Dr. Cameron as head of the project. The agency had supplied her with funds to set up a clandestine parallel lab, where she performed her own secret experiments. She had a guy working for her …” Willis tapped his forehead with his fingers. “The name’s not coming back to me. A young man …”