by Ted Allbeury
Symons shone the light down the girl’s throat and cursed quietly to himself. She was right. She had got an abscess in her throat. It was larger and the infection was greater than the time way back when he had first treated her.
He snapped off the light and sat back. “How long have you had it?”
“A week, but the real pain only started yesterday.”
“OK. I’m going to give you some capsules. Take one every four hours today and tomorrow, and I’ll come and see you the next day.”
He doled out the capsules from his medical case and she looked at them as she held them in the palm of her hand. Then she looked up at his face.
“I won’t be able to sing by Saturday, will I?”
“You won’t be singing for at least another month. This is worse than that first one you had and it’s in almost the same place.”
She smiled. “You sound very stern and cross.”
He smiled. “I am stern but I’m not cross. I couldn’t be cross with you.”
“D’you want to go to bed with me?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“I don’t know. Most men want to do it to me. You’ve never even asked if you could. You’re the only man I’ve ever met who cares about me without wanting to have me.” She shrugged. “When you want to you’ve only got to say.”
“You’re very beautiful, Debbie.” He smiled. “Just have one guy who doesn’t want bed as his reward.” He stood up. “Now take those capsules. One every four hours. No messing about or I will be cross.”
It took seven weeks for the abscess in Debbie Shaw’s throat to heal. And in the process she lost the little-girl voice and ended with a deep husky voice that would have made her fortune as a singer except that the narrow range of her new voice made singing out of the question. During the seven weeks she saw the doctor every day, and that was her only consolation.
When it was finally obvious that her career as a singer was over the doctor helped her make a claim for compensation from the US Army. The claim was dismissed on the grounds that there was no evidence that her original disability was caused by neglect on the part of the armed forces nor through her entertaining service personnel. After further pressure organized by the doctor it was eventually settled by paying her the full balance of her contract. A sum of 9,700 US dollars. Plus an ex-gratia payment of 11,000 dollars, no medical charges and free transport back to England.
8
The two of them walked together the two blocks from the Library of Congress, and Grabowski was waiting for them in one of the wooden booths at Sherrill’s Bakery and Restaurant. There was a heavy yeasty smell of baking in the air that put an edge on their appetites even at eight o’clock in the morning.
Symons ordered egg on steak and Petersen and Grabowski settled for fried oysters. It wasn’t until they were sipping their coffees that Grabowski said his piece. He was very much their senior in both rank and age, and his heavily-built body in the blue cotton T-shirt and jeans bespoke a physical toughness and strength that the two younger men would never aspire to. Even his tongue looked muscular as it explored his strong yellow teeth.
“Well, they’ve decided. It’s not safe for you two to be around for the next six months or so.”
“Why now?”
“Too many people raising hell about the Warren Commission’s findings. All sorts of investigative committees are being set up. Some official, some not. But all of them looking for blood. CIA and FBI blood preferably.”
“What’s that mean, Ziggy? Mexico?”
“No.” He belched reflectively. It seemed appreciative rather than vulgar, and Petersen, who was a film buff, recalled fleetingly that Charles Laughton in Henry VIII had belched like that. “You’ll be going to England,” Grabowski said. “You won’t be so noticeable there.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Our people have rented a house for you up in the north near the border with Wales.”
“Wales isn’t north, Ziggy. It’s west.”
“What’s the name of the other place then?”
“Scotland.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“And what do we do?”
“They want you to do a report on all your work and thinking. The theoretical stuff with all those Kraut and Latin words, and all the practical stuff. When you’ve done that we’ll see what else we can find you.”
“Sounds like white-washing stones at boot camp,” Petersen said, and he didn’t look amused.
Grabowski shrugged his huge shoulders. “That’s what you’re gonna do, my friends. Nobody’s asking. It’s an order.”
“Who’s given the order, Ziggy? Was it Helms?”
Grabowski ignored the question. “You’ll get full overseas allowances. The accommodations and upkeep will be on the house, and it’ll all count for your seniority.”
“When do we go?”
“Tonight. You’re booked on a flight to Prestwick which they tell me is the nearest airport.”
“Jesus, Ziggy. I’ve got things to arrange. We both have.” Symons’s face had lost its Boston cool but Grabowski had had twenty years of dealing with all sorts of men, and Ivy Leaguers were the easiest of the lot. So long as you didn’t let them argue.
“We’re going back to Langley now. You can both of you tell me all the things you want doing and I’ll get them done. Neither of you goes back for anything.”
“What about clothes and passports?”
“You’ll have an allowance for buying clothes out there and you’ll be having new passports. Canadian ones. New names, new IDs.”
Grabowski stood up, walked over to the counter and paid the bill. He smiled to himself as the two men followed him out. They were going to be no problem. They would do as they were told all right.
The only concession that had been made was to let them take a crate of text-books, half a dozen cans of film, and a few bundles of scientific papers. Grabowski had gone with them on the shuttle to New York so that their point of exit wasn’t traceable to Washington. As they sat drinking in the departure lounge Grabowski handed over an envelope to each of them.
“You’ll find details in there with two telephone numbers. The first of them is for routine communications but only when it’s really necessary. The second is for a real emergency. I don’t expect you to use that. You’ll be contacted every two weeks and you’ll be under surveillance most of the time.”
“Are there any restrictions on travel?”
“You’ll find the ground rules in your envelopes. One thing is for sure: you don’t talk to anyone about anything except social chit-chat. And you don’t reveal your real identities or your status. Not to anybody. Not even the Queen of England.”
Symons risked a glance at Petersen’s face and saw his colleague’s irritation at Grabowski’s banality. Symons wondered what sort of ranking Grabowski had. He seemed to have no official title and they had no idea who he reported to, but he had all the clout he needed, and they had both seen him at ease and using his authority on far senior agents to themselves. Somebody high up in the CIA seemed to use Ziggy Grabowski as his personal tracker dog, sniffing the air and herding the wayward back into the flock.
Grabowski walked across the tarmac with them and stood smiling, with his arms folded, until the last passenger was on board the jumbo and the doors had been fastened and the ramps pulled away. Symons could see him standing by the fuel bowsers, shading his eyes against the setting sun as the aircraft rolled forward along the feeder to the main runway.
The dawn was already glimmering six and a half hours later when they landed in Scotland. The Texan who met them as they passed through with their luggage was young, amiable and energetic. He had made arrangements for their wooden crate to go through customs and had arranged for a carrier to deliver it the next day.
It was a two-hour drive, the last hour giving glimpses of a heavy grey sea and a few farmhouses with their lights already on. The Texan wasn’t a talker and Petersen, uncuri
ous about the scenery, slept as Symons looked out of the car window.
As they passed an old castle built up high on a rock-face the Texan said, “Bamburgh Castle. That’s where Polanski filmed his Macbeth.” Symons didn’t reply. Petersen was the film buff.
Symons saw a sign that said, “Craster ½m,” and the car swung left down a narrow lane, and then a couple of hundred yards later left again between two wrought-iron gates. The gravel drive sloped steeply upwards and at its crest it curved right and they saw the grey stone house. It was a typical eighteenth-century Northumberland gentleman’s house. Not as large as a manor house but bigger than even a large farmhouse. It stood in a saucer-like depression with wide gravel paths in front of the house and its outbuildings. It had the dignity of nice proportions but it had been built less for beauty than to defy the long, northern, winter storms and the invaders from over the border.
The cover story for the two Americans was built on the truth. They were on sabbaticals, using the time, as Canadian medical historians, to do research on their subject regarding European medicine from the turn of the century. There was a gardener and a housekeeper, a married couple who lived in a converted flat over the stable block.
The Texan stayed with them for a week, driving them round the countryside, to the nearest town, Alnwick, and along the coast road that could take them up to Edinburgh. Their instructions allowed them to socialize with discretion. It was important that they didn’t appear to be recluses. Recluses were always objects of curiosity in any community. They learned to drink the strong local beers at the pub in Craster and once a week they ate at The White Swan in Alnwick. From time to time, as the weeks passed, one or both of them were invited by local families to meals or picnics. They returned the hospitality at The White Swan. They had each bought second-hand cars, Petersen a white MG, and Symons a primrose yellow Mini.
There were girls from local families whom they took to the cinema and for meals, but they were careful to keep them emotionally at arm’s length. There was a pretty shop assistant from Seahouses who spent odd nights with Petersen and an even prettier barmaid from Alnwick who slept with Symons. The relationships were relaxed and financial, and in the rather puritan atmosphere of the area neither party had any interest in making the liaison known.
The BBC cameraman shook his head. “There’s a reflection from the oil-painting. Can’t we take it away?”
“No way, or we’d just have a blank wall behind his head. We’ll try moving the lights. Or maybe you can use a polarizer to cut it down.”
“I can’t shift the polarizer, I’ve got to use it to mask the shine of his skin where he’s had surgery.”
“OK.” The producer turned towards the lighting crew. “Can you take the reflection off the painting, please?”
The lighting crew put up a cotton screen to soften the two main lights and most of the reflection disappeared, but the soft lighting seemed to emphasize the unnatural smoothness and cavities on the attorney’s facial skin-grafts.
Another ten minutes of checking focus and zooming, and the producer nodded to the interviewer. He sat opposite the man behind the desk, his eye on the teleprompter as he gave the voice-over to match the head on the monitor screen.
“William Alexander, Assistant District Attorney of Dallas who attended the police interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald.”
The producer jabbed his finger towards the second camera and a black and white photograph of Oswald came up on the screen. He gave it three seconds and then pointed at the interviewer who looked across at the attorney and said, “What were your impressions at the interrogation, Mr. Alexander?,” and the producer prayed that the reflection in the attorney’s spectacles wouldn’t ruin the shot. The attorney hunched forward over his desk and the cameraman silently cursed him and shifted the focus.
“I was amazed that someone so young could have the self-control that he had. Almost as if he had anticipated the situation … it was almost as if he had been rehearsed or programmed to meet the situation that he found himself in … it was almost as if he anticipated every … question, every suggestion, every move, that the people in charge of him made.”
“Rehearsed by whom?”
The rather grim mouth of the attorney arranged itself into an acid smile as he said with a shake of the head, “Who knows?”
The producer waved his hand, looking at his stop watch. “OK, Michael. That gives us one minute fourteen, maybe fifteen seconds.” He put out his hand to the attorney. “Thank you, sir, for your time, your help and the interview.”
“You’re welcome. When will it be shown?”
The producer smiled. “There’ll be a lot of pressure not to show it at all. It’ll take time. I’d say nine months.”
Jimmy Hoffa sat in the private suite adjoining his office in the large Teamsters Union building. The man with the black wavy hair poured them each a half glass of whisky, handed one of the glasses to Hoffa and sat down carefully in the chair alongside the union boss. He turned to Hoffa, his gentle, brown eyes smiling.
“I heard a story about you the other day, Jimmy. I wondered if it was true.”
“They’re never true, pal. What was this one?”
“I heard that you were in Miami when JFK was shot and when you heard that your people had lowered the flag on this building you’d given them hell and told them to raise it again.”
Hoffa scratched his crotch and said, “Yeah. That’s true all right. And when those goddamed reporters started phoning me they asked for a comment and I told ’em that Bobby Kennedy was just another lawyer now. And the bastards wouldn’t print it.” He turned his head to look at the dark man. “What does Provenzano want?”
“He’s got a proposition he thinks you’ll go for.”
“So why all this crap about wanting me to go to Detroit for a meeting? Why doesn’t he come here? He may be big but he ain’t that big. He’s just one of the Teamsters’ officials as far as my book’s concerned.”
The man smiled. “You know better than that, Jimmy. He wants you to talk to the syndicate in Detroit. He’s laid it all on for you. All you gotta do is say yes … or no.”
“Why the hurry then? Why tonight?”
“So’s you can be back for the weekend. I’ll drive you there and back.”
Hoffa looked at his watch, shrugged and stood up.
“OK. Let’s go.”
It was past midnight when the car turned off Highway 75 and took the road to Trenton.
“Why you come off the highway, Louis?”
“The meeting’s in a place we’ve got in Lincoln Park and it’s quicker this way.”
Hoffa noticed the “we’ve” and made a mental note to take the Italian down a notch or two when they got back to Washington.
“Somebody told me, Jimmy, that you were the contact between the CIA and the syndicate when they fixed to knock off John F. Is that so?”
“There were two of us. What are you stopping for?”
“I wanna phone at the gas-station over there to let ’em know we’re on the way.”
Hoffa sat waiting in the car looking across to the lights of the McLouth Steel Corporation’s huge complex. He looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes past midnight and the little squares said it was already the 30th of July.
When the Italian got back in the car he didn’t speak or look at Hoffa, and ten minutes later he pulled into a deserted lay-by. Hoffa was sitting with his eyes closed but he wasn’t asleep and the pressure of the silencer against his chest made him stir. He looked down, then, disbelieving, he looked at the Italian. “For Christ’s sake what …” And those were the last words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke.
Half an hour later the car drove through the open gates of a scrapyard. Two men helped the Italian stuff Hoffa’s body into the fifty-gallon oildrum. The big jib-crane swung down and its metal claws gripped the oildrum, biting into the metal swages, lifting it over the pyramids of rusting metal to the scrap-crusher. When the oildrum was released ten minutes later, fro
m the press that could pulp a truck to a neat bale of metal in ten minutes, it was a quite small cube. That would normally have been the end of the matter but the men who had given the order wanted absolute finality and a truck took the bale to a smelting plant in River Rouge. There the Italian stood on the platform shielding his eyes from the white heat and watched the bale of metal drop into the molten metal of the furnace.
9
Maclaren left his car at what had once been the grand entrance to the estate and the big house, which was now no more than two gaunt stone pillars with an eroded coat of arms carved on a shield at eye-level. The big house had been bulldozed flat by the developers’ men a week before the local authority appeal to make it a listed building was to be heard by the Ministry. The ensuing public outrage had been pointless apart from ensuring that the Lodge House and the Dower House could not be demolished. There had been no intention to demolish them. They could be done up and sold for a good price. Meanwhile the Dower House had been let. A young American diplomat had taken it on a twelve-month lease.
There were lights on downstairs in the house and one bedroom window showed a pale pink glow through the net curtains. Maclaren turned his back to the house to light a cigarette and held it cupped in his palm when he turned back to keep watch.
He had watched the house for two weeks, alternating the shifts with Sturgiss. The red Mustang was there. It was there almost every night except at the weekends when the girl’s husband was at home. She worked in Woolworth’s and her husband was a joiner on the night-shift at one of the big furniture factories in High Wycombe. But Maclaren guessed that she was earning more money in her sessions with the young American than she earned at Woolworth’s. She was in her early twenties and it was her gossip with one of the girls at the store that had caused Maclaren and Sturgiss to be sent down. Her gossip had been with the girl on the sweet-counter who happened to be the girl-friend of a police-constable at Marlow police station. According to the girl her extra-marital boy friend not only looked like James Bond but had told her that he was a real-life spy.