The people of the Soviet Union thank you.
Kaverin returned to the boardinghouse in the Old East Dallas part of town, opened the trunk of the DeSoto after making sure no one could see him—and no beat police officers were nearby—and emptied the pockets of the men he’d just shot. He found a fob containing the key to the front door of the boardinghouse and one to room number 2. He walked slowly up to the front door, checked to make sure he was alone, and then entered their room.
The men had not been inside that morning—after the scare with the police—but they had apparently stored some things there: several suitcases, containing clothes, money, ammunition, binoculars and Spanish to English dictionaries. He pulled out a penknife and began to look for secret compartments. He found none.
At about 12:45, he heard a commotion from the hallway, voices speaking urgently. He thought at first it might be the police, that he’d been tracked here, or that someone had seen an unidentified man entering the boarders’ room.
His hand on his pistol, he walked to the door, leaned close and listened.
“Did you hear? Did you hear?” a woman was calling, the words sliced by hysteria. “The President’s been shot! They think he’s dead!”
“No! Are you sure?” A man’s voice.
Someone began to sob.
Kaverin released his grip on the Colt, looked around the room and walked to the television set. He turned it on and sat in a creaking chair to wait for the device to warm up.
SATURDAY
The time was 2 A.M., the day after the worst day of his life.
Special Agent Anthony Barter was trudging along the sidewalk to his apartment in Richmond, Texas. He’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours and he needed a little sleep—just a nap, really—and then a shower.
Then he’d return to the hunt for Lee Harvey Oswald’s assistant or savior or bodyguard or whatever he was: the Russian spy, Mikhail Kaverin.
The fallout was bad. Barter had kept his own superiors at the FBI and the Secret Service informed of every fact he’d learned about the spy from the moment he’d gotten the report from New York. But it was finger-pointing time now and Washington wanted to know exactly, minute by minute, what he knew and when he knew it and why he wasn’t more vocal about the threat to Kennedy.
“Because it wasn’t a threat at first,” he’d explained to the assistant director of the FBI in Washington. “We thought he was after classified weapons information. His behavior was suspicious but he didn’t seem dangerous.”
The assistant director had barked, “Well, the President of the United States is now suspiciously dead, Barter. I thought you were tailing him.”
Barter had sighed. “I was. He evaded me.”
He didn’t say “us.” Barter didn’t shift blame.
“Jesus Christ.” The man told him that J. Edgar Hoover personally would be calling him at some point tomorrow. And slammed the phone down. At least that’s what Barter imagined. He heard only a click, then static.
So this is what the demise of a career looks like, he thought. His heart clutched. Being a special agent was the only job that had ever appealed to him, the only job he’d ever wanted. His passion for the FBI went back to seeing newsreels about G-Men, to reading comic books about Elliot Ness, to watching movies like Gang Busters over and over again at Saturday afternoon matinees, while munching popcorn and sipping fizzy grape soda pop.
But his future wasn’t the first thing in his mind at the moment. All he cared about was finding Lee Harvey Oswald’s accomplice, finding Kaverin. For a moment he was flushed with anger and he hoped that, if he found the man, the Russian resisted arrest so Barter could put a bullet in his head. Even as he thought this, though, he knew it was an unreasonable, passionate reflex; the reality was that he would arrest the man, following procedure to a T and interrogate him firmly but respectfully.
The problem, of course, was finding him. Since he’d been Oswald’s protector, and the assassin was now in custody, Kaverin was probably long gone. Barter guessed he was probably on a steamer headed back to Russia. Still, Barter was doing everything possible to find the man. The instant he’d heard of the shooting, he had sent the Russian’s picture to every law enforcer in Texas and neighboring states and made sure the nearby airports and the train and bus stations were being watched. The automobile rental agencies too (ironically the Texas Book Depository was crowned with a huge Hertz billboard, touting Chevrolets). Roadblocks were set up, as well, and the docks along the Texas coastline were being searched by local police, FBI, and the Coast Guard.
As every minute passed without word of a sighting, Barter grew more and more angry with himself. Oh, hell, if he’d only done more digging! Oswald had been under investigation by agents in his own office! The man had tried to defect to Russia, he was actively procommunist and had recently been in Mexico trying to get visas to Cuba and Russia. If that investigation had been better coordinated, Barter might have put the pieces together.
Now approaching his apartment, Anthony Barter paused, fished out his keys and stepped to his door, thinking: Okay, I’ll have one Lone Star beer. Yes, agents were not supposed to drink. But considering that tomorrow Mr. Hoover would tell him that he was soon to be an ex-agent, liquor was one vice that he wouldn’t have to worry about keeping secret any longer.
Barter walked inside, closed the door and locked it. He was reaching for the light switch when he heard, behind him, a floorboard creak. Special Agent Anthony William Barter’s shoulders slumped. He thought of his failure to the Bureau, to his country—and to his President. He was almost relieved when the Russian agent’s pistol muzzle touched the back of his head.
* * *
—
“How the hell did you find me?” Anthony Barter asked.
Mikhail Kaverin briefly studied the FBI agent, whose hands were shackled with his own cuffs. The Russian was impressed that the man seemed merely curious, not afraid. He returned to his task, which was using a penknife to slice open the lining of his attaché case.
Barter noted this surgery but seemed uninterested in it. His gaze was fixed ruthlessly on his visitor.
“How did I find you,” Kaverin mused, slicing away. He explained about observing the agent’s surveillance at the grocery store.
“You saw me?”
“Yes, yes, we’re trained to notice that. Aren’t you?”
“Not many people follow FBI agents. It’s usually the other way around.”
This made some sense.
He explained about his ruse at the Piggly Wiggly. The FBI man squinted his eyes shut in disgust. Then he sighed. “Okay, you didn’t kill me,” Barter said evenly. “So you’re going to kidnap me. Negotiate my life for safe passage out of the country.” He then said in a low, defiant voice, “But that isn’t going to work, my friend. We don’t negotiate with scum like you. Assassination’s the most cowardly act imaginable. You and your countrymen’re despicable and whatever you do to me, that won’t stop our entire law enforcement apparatus from finding you and making sure you’re arrested—and executed. And there’ll be sanctions against your country, you know. Military sanctions.” He shook his head in seeming disbelief. “Didn’t your superiors think through what would happen if the President was killed?”
Kaverin didn’t respond. He turned his attention to the agent. “We have not made introductions. I am Major Mikhail Kaverin of the Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie.”
“I know who you are.”
Kaverin wasn’t surprised. He said, “Well, Special Agent Barter, I have no intention of kidnapping you. Nor of killing you, for that matter. I found it necessary to come up behind you and relieve you of your weapon so that you would not act rashly—”
“Shooting an enemy of the country, a spy, is not acting rashly.”
Kaverin said, “No, but shooting an ally would be.”
“Ally?”
>
“Agent Barter, I am going to tell you some things you will undoubtedly find incredible—though they are true. Then, after we make some formal arrangements, I will give you your gun back and I will give you my gun and I will surrender to you. May I proceed?”
Warily Barter said, “Yes, all right.” His eyes shifted from the pistol to the documents extracted from the lid of the attaché case.
“Earlier this week I was called into the office of my superior at GRU headquarters. I was given an assignment: to protect an individual in the United States who would further the interests of the Soviet Union. A man we have code named Comrade Thirty-five.”
“Yeah, yeah, that son of a bitch, Lee Harvey Oswald.”
“No,” Kaverin said. “Comrade Thirty-five was our code name for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”
“What?” Barter squinted at him.
“ ‘Thirty-five,’ ” Kaverin continued, “because he was the thirty-fifth President of the United States. ‘Comrade’ because he shared certain interests with our country.” The Russian pushed forward the documents he’d extracted from his case. “Can you read Russian?”
“No.”
“Then I will translate.”
“They’re fake.”
“No, they are quite real. And I will prove to you they’re real in a moment.” Kaverin looked down and scanned the documents. “ ‘To Comrade Major Mikhail Kaverin. Intelligence received from sources in Washington, D.C., has reported that in October of this year President John Fitzgerald Kennedy signed an executive order, initiating the reduction of American advisory and military forces in Vietnam.’ ”
“Vietnam?” Barter was frowning. “That’s that country near China, right? A French colony or something. Sure, we’ve sent some soldiers there. I read about that.”
Kaverin continued his reading. “ ‘Our sources have reported that Charles de Gaulle told President Kennedy that it would be very detrimental for the United States to become enmeshed in the politics of Southeast Asia. Kennedy went against the advice of his generals and established the goal to have all American troops out of Vietnam and neighboring countries by 1964. After the Americans are gone, the communist regimes in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia will surge south through Malaysia and Singapore, establishing governments with true Marxist values throughout Southeast Asia. Our Premier and the Politburo will form an alliance with that bloc. Together we will stand firm against the wrong-minded Maoist cult in China.’
“ ‘If anything were to happen to Kennedy, our intelligence assessment is that his successor, Lyndon Johnson, will drastically increase the U.S. military presence in the region. This would be disastrous for the interests of the USSR.’ ”
He put down the documents, shook his head and sighed. “You see, Agent Barter, the mission of the agent who preceded me and of myself was to do whatever we could to uncover any threats to your President Kennedy and stop them. Our job was to protect him.”
Barter snapped, “That’s bullshit! You knew about Oswald but you didn’t report it! If you’d really been concerned, you—”
“No!” Kaverin replied angrily. “We knew nothing of Oswald. That’s not why I was sent here. There was another threat to your President. Completely unrelated to the assassin. Do you know of Luis Suarez and Carlos Barquín?”
“Of course, we’ve been on the look-out for them for months. They’re Cuban Americans under orders from Fidel Castro to kill Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs invasion. We haven’t been able to find their whereabouts.”
“I can produce them.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re in the trunk of my car.”
“Are you joking?”
“Not at all. That was my assignment. To find and eliminate them. We knew they were going to attempt to assassinate Kennedy, possibly on his visit here. When I shot them they were on Houston Street—at a place where your President’s motorcade would pass by. Undoubtedly they were looking for vantage points to shoot from. Both of them were armed.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that you had a lead to them?”
Kaverin scoffed. “What would you have done?”
“Arrested them, of course.”
“For what? Have they committed a crime?”
Barter fell silent.
“I thought not. You would have put them away for a few months for threatening the President or for having a weapon. Then they would have been released to try to assassinate him again. My solution was far more efficient and…far more permanent.” Kaverin grimaced. He said passionately, “No one was more shocked and upset than I to hear the terrible news today of your President’s fate.”
Kaverin fell silent, noting that Barter, who until now had been looking him straight in the eye, had grown evasive. The Russian said, in a whisper, “You knew about Oswald.”
No answer for a moment. Then: “I’m not at liberty to talk about investigations.”
Kaverin snapped, “You knew he was a threat and yet you were not watching him constantly?”
“We have…limited resources. We didn’t think he’d be a threat.”
Silence flowed between the men. Finally Kaverin asked softly, “Well, do you believe me, Special Agent Barter?”
After a moment the FBI man said, “Maybe I do. But you haven’t told me what you want out of all this.”
Kaverin gave a laugh. “It’s obvious, no? I want to defect. I have failed in my mission. If I return home I will become a nonperson. I will be killed and my name and all record of my existence expunged. It will be as if I never existed. I had hoped to marry, even at this age, to have a son. That is a possibility if I remain here.” He gave a faint smile. “Besides, I must tell you, Agent Barter. I’ve been in this country for only several days but I already find it rather appealing.”
“What’s in it for us?”
“I can give you a great deal of information. I have been a GRU officer for many years. And I can offer something more. Something to, as your card players here say, sweeten the pot.”
Barter said, “And what’s that?”
“What I can offer you, Agent Barter—excuse me, Special Agent Barter—is a real, living, breathing KGB agent.”
“KGB?”
“Indeed. You can arrest him and interrogate him. Or your CIA could run him as a double agent. You Americans love KGB spies, do you not? Why, your citizens know nothing of the GRU or the Stasi. But the KGB? Pick up a James Bond novel or go to the cinema. Wouldn’t it be a fine national security coup to land a fish like that?”
Kaverin put just the right tone into his voice to suggest that the arrest would be fine for Barter’s career personally too.
“Who is this man?”
“He is in Miami, operating undercover as the head of a transportation company. His real name is Nikolai Spesky. He purports to be a GRU agent, but in fact his employer is the KGB.”
“How d’you know that?”
“For one thing, because of your presence on my trail.”
“Me?”
Kaverin said, “I assume you learned of me through an anonymous tip, correct?”
“Yes, that’s right. Received by our New York office.”
“Perhaps through New York, but it originated from Comrade Spesky in Miami. He informed on me. You see, neither Customs officials or any airline in New York knew that my final destination was Dallas. Only Spesky did. I didn’t receive my ticket until I was in Florida. In fact, I wasn’t wholly surprised when you appeared; I was suspicious of Spesky from the beginning. That is one of the reasons I was looking for surveillance—and spotted you.”
“Why did you suspect him?”
“Top-brand vodka and paté and smoked oysters and bread with very little mold.”
Barter shook his head.
Kaverin continued, “Spesky told me his wife had sent him such gifts f
rom Moscow. No GRU field agent’s wife would ever be able to afford such delicacies, only the wife of a KGB agent could.”
“But why would he betray you? Wouldn’t the KGB have the same interest you would—to keep the President alive so he’d withdraw the troops from Vietnam?”
Kaverin smiled again. “Logic would suggest that, yes. But in truth the essential interest of the KGB is in furthering the interest of the KGB. And that cause is advanced every time the GRU fails.”
“So your security agencies spy on each other, for no other purpose than sabotaging their rivals?” Barter muttered, his tone dark.
Kaverin fixed him with a piercing look. “Yes, shocking, isn’t it? Something that could never happen here. Fortunately you have Mr. J. Edgar Hoover to uphold the moral integrity of your organization. I know he would never illegally wiretap politicians or civil rights leaders or members of other governmental agencies.”
Anthony Barter offered his first smile of the evening. He said, “I can’t make any deals myself. You understand that?”
“Of course.”
“But I think you’re telling the truth. I’ll go to bat for you. You know what that means?”
Kaverin gave a broad frown. “Please. I am a fan of the New York Mets.”
Barter laughed. “The Mets? They had close to the worst season in major league history this year. Couldn’t you pick a better team?”
Kaverin waved his hand dismissively. “It was their second year as a team. Give them some time, Agent Barter. Give them time.”
The Russian then slid the photographs of the top-secret documents toward the agent, along with the keys to the DeSoto. He uncuffed the agent and, without a moment’s hesitation, handed over both of the pistols.
“I’m going to make some phone calls, Major Kaverin. I hope you won’t mind if I put the handcuffs on you.”
“No, I perfectly understand.”
He slipped them on, albeit with Kaverin’s hands in front of him, not behind his back. Before he reached for the phone, though, he asked, “Would you like to have a beer?”
The Big Book of Espionage Page 146