The Coldest Warrior

by The Coldest Warrior (retail) (epub)

  He left a note for Claire. “I’ll be home for dinner.”

  Gabriel glanced at himself in the vestibule mirror on his way out the front door. He almost didn’t recognize the man he saw, face gray with determination. He breathed deeply to calm himself. He didn’t know what to expect from Coffin. He put his 9mm Glock under his belt in the small of his back.

  GABRIEL FOUND COFFIN on a secluded bench protected from the light rain by a stand of Norwegian pine, and farther along the stone path, there was the conservatory’s tarnished glass dome. Swampy daylight brought out the intense purples, pinks, whites, and yellows of the ranging peonies, azaleas, and roses in the untended plantings, each bordered with bricks. Vibrant colors were a gift to the visitor’s eyes, but everywhere the unweeded beds had gone to seed, and in front of Coffin stood Bartholdi Fountain. Gabriel wasn’t surprised he been asked to meet by the fountain. A man who patterned his mind also patterned his day. Every Tuesday Coffin held a breakfast meeting at the Agency’s Navy Hill offices so that he could spend his lunch hour in the orchid collection in the nearby Botanical Gardens.

  “Once beautiful, wasn’t it?” Coffin said to Gabriel when he approached. Coffin took in the expression of French Empire Romanticism, now neglected, with rust spots showing through the aging bronze veneer. Three busty nymphs in the fullness of desire stood atop a pedestal of seashells; water dribbling from the mouths of tired-looking dragons mixed with the rain. Several of the opaque glass lamps had been vandalized.

  “‘Dreamt glory toward which our imagination leaps,’” Coffin said. “Jack, good to see you. I’d invite you to sit, but you’ve invited yourself. Always a rude man, aren’t you, sneaking up on me like that.”

  “Well quoted. ‘The dreamt glory.’ A bad day to be outside.”

  Nothing was said between the two men for a moment. Coffin looked quizzically at Gabriel. “I didn’t know that you had interest in poetry. You surprise me with the things that you know.”

  Coffin pointed at the fountain. “It hasn’t been restored since the 1930s. A few tourists come here, but they won’t be here today. If they’re out at all, they’ll visit one of the main attractions—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. Our recent presidents won’t be honored with a big marble monument.” Coffin laughed caustically. “We get the presidents we deserve. Narcissistic blowhards, smug liars, whiny bastards.”

  He turned directly to Gabriel. “We’ll have this place to ourselves. I suspect you understand that it’s no coincidence that I asked to meet now that you’re outside.”

  “Chance has its own design,” Gabriel said.

  Coffin smiled. “Now you’re talking like me. Yes, I believe in the design of chance. Coincidence can hide an intelligent design—like nature. Have you visited the orchid collection? They don’t have many species, but the ones they have are remarkable. They are natural adapters, the embodiment of chance as its own design.”

  Gabriel watched Coffin, comfortable in his head expounding on his hobby.

  “We collectors prize rare orchids for their showy colors and their complex relationship to habitat. Some are dependent on fungi in the soil; others use fungi that attach to trees. As habitats change, fungi change, and orchids can lose fungi they depend on. Orchids are the first casualties of environmental collapse. They are like truth that way—fragile like truth.”

  Coffin smiled. “I understand you’re still looking for the truth of Wilson’s death.”

  “Is that why you asked me here? To test what I know?”

  Coffin paused. “The whole truth isn’t known and should never be known. What have you got?”

  “A source inside. He has the names.” A lie. “Is it you?”

  Coffin laughed. “It was safer when you were on the inside.” Coffin sat quietly and took his eyes off a laughing couple sharing an umbrella, who had briefly gotten Coffin’s attention. He looked at Gabriel. “Truth in life is like truth in art. It’s something that you never quite find, but we seek it like a greedy miner prospecting for gold. You think you’ve found it—a line of poetry that feels true—but you discover there is no such thing as the truth. That is why understanding the allusiveness of poetry is important for the spy. We think life is different because there are facts and an endless text, but it’s not different. We fool ourselves thinking that with conscientious effort we can find the truth.”

  Coffin paused. When he spoke again his voice was politely disparaging. “Wilson died. How he died should be knowable. Others were in the room. A man in the Agency authorized it. But no one wants to speak. All we have is the official explanation. Our Cold War was an artful victory of language. We used language to create ambiguity, to shift meaning, and we used it to hide the truth. We wrapped ourselves in glorious, dissembling phrases. Our atrocities in Vietnam were ‘peace with honor’ and suborning Mohammad Mossadegh a ‘victory for democracy.’ Our current history is written with our official denials, and with each denial comes a truth, which defeats the truth. Of course, you’d never get anyone to admit that, but there it is. We’ve used language cleverly and systematically to make it hard for anyone to say there it is, there’s the truth.”

  Coffin looked directly at Gabriel. A long silence settled between the old acquaintances. Gabriel didn’t detect a note of irony in Coffin’s voice, just a grim accounting. Jumped or fell. A truth.

  “You’d be wise to live with the official explanation,” Coffin said, coming to the point of the meeting. “Don’t be blinded by what you’d like to see.”

  Just like him, Gabriel thought. The man’s labyrinth.

  “The truth of Wilson’s death will be hard to establish. Ainsley is dead. Dulles, Wisner, Edwards. All of them. It’s a puzzle locked in the skulls of the dead.”

  “Why did you want to see me?”

  “You’ve been in contact with Weisenthal. Don’t ask how I know. It’s my job to know. Men in the Agency are threatened by you. They have careers at stake.”

  Coffin interlaced his fingers, long and gnarled like roots. In spite of the humidity, Coffin wore his bespoke English suit, the color of undertaker’s black, and his face had the pallor of a lifelong chain smoker. He was looking at nothing when he spoke again.

  “You no longer work for the Agency. If you did, I could help you verify what Weisenthal tells you, but I’m not much loved by the Boss. He is looking for an excuse to retire me. He inherited me, and I suspect I’ll be out in the next housecleaning—unless he goes first.”

  Coffin raised an emphatic eyebrow. “Was Wilson murdered? Yes. Is the man responsible still inside? Yes. Does Weisenthal know who he is?”

  Coffin’s eyes returned to Gabriel. “You have a wife and a family. You would be wise to let it go.”

  Coffin stood abruptly. He removed his Homburg and swept back his thick, graying hair. He opened his silver-handled umbrella and walked off with a measured stride. Upon coming to the edge of the pine’s protective covering, he turned. “There was really no reason that I wanted to see you. I just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay. Being on the outside can feel very lonely. What I’m telling you is coming as advice, not as a warning. I’m not the only one who knows this.”

  Gabriel looked at the tall, dignified head of Counterintelligence, bent slightly from his long career, but still inscrutable with a hawklike visage.

  Coffin gazed at Gabriel. “What gets you excited about this?”

  “To make the men who inflicted terrible suffering also suffer.”

  Coffin permitted himself a weary smile. “A noble ambition. How will you make your catch?”

  Gabriel flicked his wrist with a fly fisherman’s practiced arm. “Patience. Still water. A good lure.” He added, “It all began with Mueller and Wilson in Berlin, didn’t it?”

  Gabriel waited for a protest, a nod, a hint, but all he got was the man’s dull gaze.

  20

  Lincoln Memorial Drive

  Every CIA chief of station should have his own Jack Gabriel, they used to say in Saigon, for how could any chief o
f station in that war zone have managed without this diligent, unflinching fifty-two-year-old officer, with his quarter century of covert operations experience? It had been his job to find a good story that explained how a high-ranking Viet Cong officer died in captivity, and he’d explained pacification umpteen times to skeptical congressmen touring the country. Gabriel pulled off the extraordinary and the mundane, which added to his reputation for being good at outwaiting the other side in the spy’s patient waiting game.

  But Gabriel’s patience was exhausted that morning. He’d done as instructed and sat in his Volvo at the address Weisenthal had given. Gabriel had read the newspaper listlessly, looking up when a pedestrian passed, thinking it was Weisenthal, and each time he glanced at the stately Victorian house across the street. How long would he wait?

  GABRIEL STEPPED BACK from the Victorian’s side door, having rung the bell three times. He looked up at the forest-green windows, which were a stark contrast to the canary-yellow flourish of a gabled roof, which set it apart from plainer homes on the street. Gabriel thought no one was home, but just as he went to strike the brass knocker again, an older woman appeared at the corner of the wraparound porch. Her hair was dyed dark brown, and she wore low heels and a conservative ankle-length dress. Her expression was polite but severe, the fussy expression of a verger directing a parishioner to a seat. She motioned Gabriel forward to the front door.

  “I am looking for Herbert Weisenthal.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It’s always someone. We don’t use the side door. This way.”

  Gabriel was inside the vestibule when she pointed to a black leather guest book. “You can sign if you like. We keep a record of everyone who visits.”

  Gabriel saw three signatures at the top, each an indecipherable scrawl. He tried to make out the names, but their penmanship was a sort of secret handwriting, and he added his name to the group with an unrecognizable scribble.

  Abundant flower arrangements adorned the dark, wood-paneled sitting room that was immaculately free of the clutter of everyday life.

  “Come this way,” she said sternly. She extended one hand, inviting him to move through the sitting room to the parlor.

  Gabriel knew instantly this was not Weisenthal’s home. Bouquets graced a breakfront and the fireplace’s hearth, and he recognized within the flowers’ fragrance another smell that tickled his nose—something familiar that he had trouble naming. He thought for a moment that he’d come to the wrong address, but the matron confirmed the name. The gaudy flower arrangements, the guest book, the respectful hush. His unconscious made the association even before his rational mind caught up with the word that described his suspicion. Gabriel stopped at the French doors that opened onto a larger parlor, where he saw two women and a man sitting quietly. The front row of folding chairs faced a modest catafalque. On it, decorated in white silk bunting, sat a casket.

  One mourner in the second row looked back at Gabriel but, not recognizing him, returned to her respectful silence. The usher extended her hand to an empty chair near the front and offered a copy of the printed funeral service.

  Gabriel walked down the aisle and made his way to the half-couch casket. The pallor of death was shocking, but then came a sort of relief to see that the embalmed body wasn’t Herbert Weisenthal. That possibility, absurd to contemplate, had rattled him briefly and still reverberated in his imagination.

  The deceased, Gabriel read in the order of service, was Mr. Patrick Kelly, veteran of the Korean War, graduate of Temple University, and a former employee of the CIA’s Office of Security. Gabriel gazed at the face, drawn to its lifelessness. The eyes were closed, cheeks slightly sunken and touched up, and he had a lopsided jaw. Even in death he was a big, brawny man with shoulders like a rhinoceros, and he completely filled the casket.

  Gabriel paid his respects to the wife, who sat in the front row. He felt an obligation to politely acknowledge her even if he didn’t know the deceased. She wore her grief bravely, he thought, but also comfortably, and he thought how the death of a partner in a bad marriage could leave the survivor rapturously alone. He tried not to read too much into her sad smile when he offered his hand and a vague condolence.

  A throng of people had begun to gather beyond the French doors waiting to join the viewing. Gabriel saw that the queue stretched out the front door onto the lawn, and in just a few minutes a crowd had gathered waiting to sign the guest book. He saw his mistake. He’d gone to the side door, where there was no sign for O’Malley’s Funeral Home, and he’d arrived a few minutes early for the viewing.

  Many of the mourners knew one another, and men and women in black nodded or shared a whispered confidence. Gabriel was on his way out, moving past the arriving guests, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Herb Weisenthal.

  “So, you are here,” Gabriel said. “For a moment I thought you were in the casket.”

  “Well, I’m not, but I could be.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “I wouldn’t admit quite so much.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I knew him years ago.” Weisenthal nodded toward the casket. “It’s shocking, but then you move on. I thought you should see what you are up against. My wife is parked around the corner. Let’s talk outside.”

  Gabriel followed Weisenthal to a Volkswagen bus parked on a side street a half block away. Its rounded, bulging orange shape stood out against the black sedans, and a roof rack was loaded with suitcases. Gabriel recognized Weisenthal’s wife sitting behind the wheel, watching for their arrival.

  “Get in the back,” Weisenthal said.

  Gabriel hesitated.

  “Do as I say. It’s not safe for us to be seen together. Get in. Mary will drive and we will talk.”

  Gabriel hopped in and sat beside big duffel bags, a lunch box, and a stack of highway road maps. Without instruction, as if they had rehearsed the next steps, Weisenthal’s wife pulled away from the curb and proceeded to the end of the block, turning into heavy traffic. Mary gripped the steering wheel tightly, and Gabriel thought she had the frowzy appearance of someone who’d left home in a hurry.

  “Mary knows everything, Jack, everything relevant to this situation.” Weisenthal had turned around and faced Gabriel in the back seat. His voice had enormous calm and reasonableness. “We talked about trust. There is a type of trust that I didn’t mention. Mary and I have discussed what happened, and I told her the detail that interests you. Our plan to go forward changed two days ago when I saw in the newspaper that Patrick Kelly had drowned. There was an old photograph of him in uniform, and if it hadn’t been for that photograph, I don’t think I would have made the connection. Then I remembered the name. You meet a man once and it’s not likely you’ll remember the name, but we are visual creatures, and an image stays with you, particularly his face—that nose, that jaw.

  “I wouldn’t have stopped to read the news item, but the manner of death got my attention. The way it was described. A healthy man, a good swimmer, is found dead, washed up on a beach in Chesapeake Bay. His canoe was found a mile away, abandoned. Of course, he drowned, but the police couldn’t tell if it was an accidental drowning, suicide, or murder.”

  Weisenthal paused. “What you don’t know is that Patrick Kelly was in the hotel room the night Wilson died. I know that. Three other men know it. And knowing that set off alarms. I began to put things together. Ainsley was also in the hotel room, and he died in a fall from his balcony. Two deaths with no connection except that each man was in the hotel room with Wilson.”

  Weisenthal directed his wife onto Twenty-Third Street. “We left Washington two years ago and came back hoping that the city had changed, with Nixon gone and the protests ended. But it’s not safe for us. This town doesn’t let you change, and against our will, we were drawn back into my past. We’re leaving again, this time for good. We were in self-exile in India, and during that time I learned that exiles feed on hope. Another month comes. Another year comes. But s
till there is hope.” Weisenthal swept his hand past the dull government buildings. “Here are only monuments and corruption. Did I make mistakes? Yes. Leaving is the right thing to do.” He looked at Gabriel with a pleasant smile. “Kelly died with his secret. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

  The old spy brought out a tape recorder. “You’ll want a record. There are no files because I was good at my job and I destroyed them. So, all you will have are my recorded words.” He paused. “Am I afraid? Yes. Not for me, but for Mary. She didn’t choose this life, and I am blessed to have her. Don’t ask me where we’re going. You would risk having to lie, and I would risk betrayal. I don’t trust you to protect us, but I trust you with the truth.”

  The Volkswagen bus was approaching Lincoln Memorial Circle. Afternoon light winked and sparkled on the broad Potomac beside the Lincoln Memorial. The marble staircase that led to the seated Lincoln gazing at the Capitol was hidden from the angle of their approach, but even from the north the memorial was a stunning monument. White marble columns were illuminated in the pallid light and crowned with a frieze of garlands that consecrated the memory of an assassinated president. Gabriel’s eyes were drawn to the colonnade.

  “There,” Weisenthal said, pointing. “We’ll sit there. We won’t be more than an hour,” he said to Mary. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “By the bench?”

  “Yes, there, on the left,” he said.

  Gabriel had gotten out of the Volkswagen at the end of Arlington Memorial Bridge, and he dodged cars crossing the street toward the sidewalk that circled the memorial. He heard Weisenthal’s club foot limp behind, slowing him. Then Gabriel heard the explosion. A beat later, the force of the blast knocked him to the sidewalk. The massive concussive blast set off car alarms a block away and threw tourists assembled at the memorial to the ground. A hint of sulfur mixed with the afternoon heat.