The Berlin Conspiracy (24 page)

“Could use an elevator in here,” I mumbled as we crossed. He didn’t respond, just stared at me and kept going. I was aware that he stopped at the bottom of the stairway and
looked back up. I kept moving, made the turn at the second-floor landing before stopping. After a tense moment I heard the street door open and close and I was pretty sure he’d gone out.

If I was gonna turn back, this was the time. It seemed like the smart move—I could be walking into anything. I had almost talked myself into going back down the stairs when I thought, What the hell do I do then? Fuck it. I wasn’t gonna turn back just when I was finally getting somewhere.

I climbed to the third floor and stopped on the landing to catch my breath. Iceberg, I thought with a chuckle. As in the tip of. Josef had said it was the “public relations” arm of ZR/RIFLE, which was the Company’s Executive Action Group (or, in plain English, the assassination squad). Harvey King’s domain until he was kicked out by the Kennedys for cavorting with the mob. I wondered who was running it now.

Iceberg’s job was to divert blame by creating false evidence, or at least cause enough confusion that no one would be sure what had happened. The “plausible deniability” team. The Kovinski double was a nice touch. He’d probably been all over West Berlin creating witnesses who could testify to Kovinski’s erratic behavior. The photo would’ve been manufactured here, too, along with the propaganda pamphlet, all part of the program to establish their stooge’s credentials as a Commie menace.

I pushed the door open and stepped into a large, rectangular space, maybe thirty feet wide, three times that in length. The early-afternoon sun was streaming through the south-facing windows, and I needed a moment to adjust to the bright light. There were no walls or partitions on the floor, just row after row of empty metal shelving. Closing the door gently behind me, I went to one of the front windows and looked onto the street to see if I could catch sight
of Horst. The food van was too far away and I couldn’t pick him out among the crowd, which was probably just as well. If I couldn’t spot him, no one else would.

As I surveyed the room, a long white package caught my eye through the rows of shelving. I walked around and, as I neared, saw that the box was tied in red ribbon with a sizable bow on top. There were two plain blue containers, like large laundry boxes, sitting beside it and it was all situated directly in front of the freight elevator, ready for pickup. Using the small screwdriver that I still had in my jacket, I sliced through the packing tape on one of the blue boxes and opened the lid. Inside were three neatly folded uniforms, the type worn by the West Berlin police, complete with badges and sidearms. I replaced the top of the box and put it back on the shelf, looking more or less untouched, then opened the second box in the same manner. It contained three large padded envelopes, which I opened. Inside were wallets and identification badges for Secret Service agents. This obviously wasn’t a fly-by-night conspiracy.

I stood back and studied the long white box. I was pretty sure what was inside, but there was no way I wasn’t going to look. I undid the bow and slid the ribbon off as delicately as I could, then lifted the top. A gold card sat on top of a couple of dozen longstemmed red roses. The unsigned note read “Thinking of You.” I removed the flowers, put them aside, then extracted the false bottom from the box. And there it was—a Russian-made Tokarev sniper’s rifle, complete with telescopic sight, nestled snugly into its molded container. The rifle in the Kovinski photo.

My first thought was sabotage. I picked up the weapon, looked it over. It was heavy, but nicely balanced. I cradled it in my arms, checked the telescopic sight out the window, looked around the street, but still couldn’t locate Horst. It would be easy enough to realign the scope, I thought, but
the shooter would certainly recalibrate before firing. Even if I could throw the sighting mechanism off, it would probably mean innocent people getting hit. No, the firing pin was the way to go. I was no firearms expert, but I was pretty sure that I could remove the pin. … Then I realized that this weapon could be just a decoy and the sniper wouldn’t use it. There might even be more than one gunman….

The freight-elevator doors suddenly thumped open behind me, echoing across the empty floor. I spun around, half expecting to be met by a bullet, but instead came face-to-face with the man who, in my mind, represented all the demented lunacy the Company had to offer. Henry Fisher looked every bit the pompous prick I remembered from Nicaragua.

“Hello, Jack.” He stepped out of the elevator, followed by Johnson and the Kovinski double. “What brings you our way?”

“I was hoping to join the Truth Commission.”

He attempted a smile but it looked painful. “Didn’t I hear that you’re a wanted man?”

“Consider me armed and dangerous.”

“So I see.” He walked around behind me in a pathetic attempt at intimidation. “You know, Jack, you almost fucked up the whole show. Kovinski was so spooked after you got to him that he was useless. We had to dump him. Two months prep down the drain.”

“I guess I should feel bad about that.”

“Don’t worry about us, we’re back on line now. But look at you,” he sneered. “With your fingerprints all over our murder weapon.” He nodded to the Kovinski twin, who stepped forward and grabbed the rifle by the barrel. I was already starting to get the picture, but it got a lot clearer when I saw that he was wearing surgical gloves. Johnson patted me down, reclaimed his Beretta, then gave me a gentle shove into the elevator.

“You’re suddenly a very important man, Jack,” Fisher said, following me in. “You’re about to go down in history as the man who shot John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

The doors slammed shut and we started our descent.

The ground floor, with a large sliding door at the back, was being used as a garage for six nondescript, government-type vehicles, including the black Chrysler that had been crushed by Melik’s taxi. Chase was sitting at a table near the door with four other men, two of whom I recognized as officers in the Cuban Brigade—men I’d first seen in Nicaragua and then again at the Miami Bowl when Kennedy got such an unexpectedly warm reception. Judging by this crew, his Berlin welcome was likely to be a lot less friendly.

Fisher sat me down in a small, windowless office, swung his size-twelve loafers onto the heavy wooden desk, leaned back in his swivel chair, and gave me a cagey look. He was feeling good.

“We’ve got a few minutes while things get prepped,” he said. “I’d offer you a drink but I’m fresh out.”

“Maybe some other time,” I said, wondering if I’d forgotten just how big an asshole he was or if he’d gotten worse.

Folding his arms behind his head, he rocked back in the chair. “I’m sorry you don’t see the wisdom of what we’re doing, Jack. Believe me, it’s for the good of the country. … The world.”

I didn’t bother to answer, which seemed to irritate him. He had a big, stupid grin stuck on his face.

“We’re in a war, a bitter war that’s going to determine the way this world looks in the twenty-first century. Some people don’t have the stomach to win it, but I’m not one of them.”

“Yeah, you’re a real fucking patriot, Henry,” I said. He
glared at me for a minute, then dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward. His voice pitched up a couple of notches with emotion.

“Are you one of those people that’s so goddamned enamored with this guy that you can’t see what’s happening? The son of a bitch has got most of the country snowed with his cute smile and his bullshit Harvard speechwriters, but you should be smarter than that.”

“I guess I’m just not as sharp as you.”

“Don’t be an asshole!” He leaned back again, picked up a rubber band, and fiddled with it, stretching it this way and that. “Haven’t you noticed that ever since that Catholic bastard got into the White House, the Commies have run rings around us?”

“I think you’re onto something there, Henry. He’s probably taking orders from the Vatican. I hear the place is crawling with Marxist cardinals.”

“Fuck you if you don’t take the future of our country seriously! You deserve your fate.” The rubber band snapped. “For Christ’s sake, Jack, you were on the Cuba team. … Doesn’t it mean anything to you that the bastard let those brave men die on that beach? That day fucked up everything, I mean everything!”

He left a space for me to say something, but I just stared at him. He shook his head, stood up, and started pacing. There was nowhere to go, so he walked in a circle. I don’t know why it mattered so much to him, but for some reason he wanted me to see what a great thing he was doing. Maybe some corner of his mind had a problem with it and he needed me in order to justify it to himself. Or maybe he was just so goddamned full of his own piety that it overflowed out of his mouth.

“It
all
came out of Cuba!” he said, throwing his arms open, imploring me to see reason. “You think Khrushchev
would’ve had the guts to put a wall through this city if our president hadn’t been such a weak sister in Cuba? … And forget the idea that he faced Khrushchev down over the missiles. Big fucking hero! Ask yourself why they were there in the first place!
Nuclear warheads ninety miles off the Florida coast!
If Kennedy had done his duty at the Bay of Pigs, they wouldn’t have been there! He made us look like assholes, so Khrushchev decided he could fuck us. … It’s just like with that goddamned PT boat. Lieutenant Johnny-boy Kennedy navigates straight into the path of a Jap warship, the only skipper in the whole damn Pacific War to do so, and he becomes a fucking war hero for saving his crew—by writing a message on a coconut! They made a fucking movie about it, for Christ’s sake! Well, I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna let that Irish bastard navigate my country into the path of a Soviet destroyer!”

I wish I could say that he was at the edge of sanity, or maybe over the edge, but I’m sorry to report that it wasn’t the case. He was in touch with reality, all right, he just saw it all upside down and twisted inside out. Like a lot of other people. In the end, he was no more than a garden-variety fanatic spouting the kind of crazy ideas that you could find in any coffee shop, barber’s chair, or executive boardroom in the country. It’s just that Fisher, and a few others like him, had been let loose on the world. He was a Company man, and Company men saw the world in a way that we mere mortals could never understand. They would save the world from communism even if they had to blow it up in the process.

He was looking at me, waiting for a response. “I never thought of it like that, Henry,” I said. “Thanks for setting me straight.”

“Fuck you, Jack,” he said, finding his chair again. “It’s all a big joke, right?”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?” He seemed to appreciate that and decided to have one last grumble.

“Meanwhile, Bobby sits up there in the lustice Department indicting outstanding Americans, laughing when anybody mentions the international Communist conspiracy. Actually laughing! You know, I used to think they were just naive, but they’re no more naive than you are.”

He opened the top desk drawer, removed a group of black-and-white eight-by-ten glossies, and tossed them into my lap.

“You’re a menace, Jack.”

The first picture was taken at the Markthalle, early on Sunday morning. It featured me standing at a fruit stand, paying a little old lady for a green apple while Josef stood behind me. I flipped quickly through the others: Josef standing, me sitting on a bench near the playground; a grainy night shot of me getting into his car outside the dilapidated house on Berlinerstrasse; the two of us clasping hands as he dropped me outside Hotel Europa….

“Consorting with the enemy,” Fisher smirked. “You’re a traitor, Jack, an agent of communism who turned on his own country and shot our beloved president. It should play very well. I guarantee the press’ll eat it up.”

“You know, Henry,” I said, passing the photos back, “if it wasn’t you, I’d be worried. But I know that you’ve fucked up pretty much everything you were ever involved with.” It was bullshit, of course. Fisher was a screwup, all right, but he wasn’t running this show. It was way beyond him.

“That’s right, Jack. You just relax,” he purred, placing the photos back into the drawer. “Everything’s gonna work out just fine. In fact, once I thought about it, I realized that you’re much better in the role of assassin than Kovinski. It’s more dramatic, you know, an American who’s betrayed his
country. I think it points up the danger from within. Too bad you don’t speak Russian.”

I was about to come back with a snappy reply, but I was cut short by Johnson, who walked through the door with a fully loaded hypodermic needle in his hand.

“I hope you’re not planning to stick me
with that thing,” I said nervously.

“Nothing to worry about,” Johnson drawled. “Cosmic Cocktail, they call it, won’t hurt a bit. In fact, it’s kinda cool.”

“You’ve tried it, have you?”

“I used to be a guinea pig,” he smiled.

“How about putting it in a glass of water?”

“Sorry, man, it’s gotta go intravenous.” He held the syringe up to the light, tapped it a couple of times with his forefinger, then gently pushed the plunger up until a drop of liquid squirted out the end.

“You afraid of needles, Jack?” Fisher laughed. “He is. … He’s scared of the needle. That’s fucking priceless!”

I’ve never been too happy about the sight of a pointed metal spike coming at me. One time in Kansas, I was broke
enough that I tried to make a buck by giving blood, but I was out the door before the nurse could get anywhere near me. I even lived through the pain of a root canal rather than face the needle. I’m not embarrassed. Everybody’s got a phobia; that’s mine.

Johnson promised that I wouldn’t feel a thing, told me to take my jacket off and roll up my sleeve. He chuckled when he saw that I still had what was left of his cuffs around my wrists and I recounted the story of how I’d removed them, just to stall the inevitable.

“Christ, you’re lucky you didn’t blow a finger off,” he said, producing the key and removing the manacles.