The Tears of Autumn (10 page)

“No,” Patchen replied. “It’s logical.”

“It’s grotesque,” Foley said; his voice had lost timbre, and he put a hand to his neck and cleared his throat. He began to cough, and in the midst of the spasm lit a cigar.

“It’s grotesque,” he repeated. “John Fitzgerald Kennedy and these people do not belong in the same order of nature.”

“Nevertheless,” Christopher said, “the possibility is there.”

“How is it there—even the possibility?” Foley asked hotly. “How did they do it, how did they organize it? Give me the scenario.”

“These things are less difficult than you think,” Christopher said. “Tradecraft is a simple art.”

“What
is a simple art?” Foley asked.

“Tradecraft,” Patchen explained. “It’s jargon for the technique and practice of espionage. Go on, Paul.”

“This is all speculation, Foley, and I like speculation even less than you seem to,” Christopher said. “Bear with me for a minute.”

“All right,” Foley said.

“They needed an opportunity, and they knew it would come. American Presidents show themselves in public under security arrangements that are the laughingstock of the world. In addition to opportunity, they needed an assassin.”

“So they reached into Dallas and picked out a psychotic like Oswald?” Foley said, his voice rising. “Come off it, Christopher.”

“If I’m right, yes—they reached into Dallas and picked out Oswald,” Christopher said. “His psychosis was the handle they had on him.”

“Psychotics can’t be trusted to function,” Foley said, and Christopher, without surprise, again felt the man’s stubborn resistance to what he was being told.

“I’d say he functioned very well,” Christopher said. “You don’t have to be sane to pull a trigger. You tell an agent who is obsessed with something, as Oswald was obsessed with his own impotence and the power of others, something that will inspire him to act out of the logic of his insanity.”

“And what did they tell Oswald?”

“I don’t know yet. I would have told him that I was a Soviet intelligence officer, and that we’d been watching him benevolently for years, here and when he was in Russia, knowing that he was capable of a great act that would change history. That would have fitted in with his fantasy.”

Foley looked at his watch. “Half my time is gone,” he said wearily. “Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Why can’t Oswald have just
done
it for his own insane reasons?”

“One thing, and again it’s speculation, but it fits in with the theory because it fits in with standard clandestine practice,” Christopher said. “Oswald killed the President with a rifle. That’s the tool of an agent, not the weapon of a lunatic. Every other President who has been killed or wounded by an assassin has been killed or wounded by a pistol—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley. Both Roosevelts were attacked with pistols. Gandhi was killed with a pistol. Nuts like to smell their victims. Oswald used a rifle, and he left it behind like a professional and walked away. If he’d been a real professional, instead of something designed for one-time use, he would have got away.”

Christopher was still standing. He had taken care to speak in a calm voice. He looked down at Foley, who had closed his eyes again; he was massaging the bridge of his nose to advertise his fatigue.

“I’d like to talk to you, Patchen,” Foley said.

He said nothing more to Christopher and did not look at him again.

3

Patchen walked Christopher to the door. Foley was still sprawled in the chair with his hand to his face when Patchen returned.

“Get me a glass of water,” he said.

When Patchen handed him the glass, Foley put it on the table beside him and opened his eyes; his pupils were still dark, as if bruised.

“How well do you know this Christopher?” Foley asked.

“We’ve known each other for twenty years,” Patchen said. “We came into the outfit on the same day. I’ve backstopped his operations for more than ten years.”

“Then you can’t be very objective.”

“You can check my assessment of Christopher with anyone else who knows his work,” Patchen said. “Three things: first, he’s intelligent and entirely unsentimental. Second, he will go to any lengths to get at the truth, he never gives up. Third, he is not subject to fear.”

“Everyone is subject to fear.”

“No. He’ll walk into anything.”

“Then he’s crazy,” Foley said.

“In that respect, maybe. But it makes him very valuable.”

“This theory of his is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese—you know that, don’t you?”

“I thought enough of it to bring you over here to listen to it,” Patchen said. “The theory, as a theory with no hard facts to support it, is sound enough.”

“Is it? In what way, exactly?”

“He’s right about two things. They had a motive, and they had the skill and the experience to bring off an operation of this kind.”

Foley leaped to his feet. Standing over Patchen, he pointed a finger at his face. “Let’s get this straight once and for all,” he said. “They had no goddamn motive. None.”

Patchen’s unblinking eyes did not change expression. “We both know they did, Dennis,” he said.

Foley’s face was closed and angry. Patchen knew why; he understood that Foley, who had defended the living President with all the power of his mind, did not regard loyalty as something that stopped with death. Foley had stood next to the President of the United States, believing that everyone ought to love him as Foley did. He wanted to believe that only a madman would kill such a man as Kennedy had been; he wanted the world to believe it.

“I won’t have any son of a bitch saying that what happened to Jack in Dallas was a
punishment,”
Foley said. He breathed deeply. “I want this matter dropped, right here and now,” he said. “Send Christopher back to wherever he comes from.
Drop
it, Patchen.”

“You don’t think this should be brought to the attention of the President?—two lines on a sheet of paper.”

“No. It’s not worth his time. If there is anything on paper, burn it. I don’t think you grasp the implications of what this nut is trying to get us to believe.”

“I see the implications,” Patchen said. “All of them. So does Christopher.”

“Who else is he going to go to with this?”

“No one.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“He lives in secret, Foley. He doesn’t talk to anyone but us.”

“You just told me he never gives up,” Foley said. “What if he decides not to give up on this, then what?”

“Then he’ll solve it, one way or another. He knows everybody in the world, and he’s a very senior officer. He requires no support. He’s what we call a singleton—he operates alone, goes where he pleases.”

“Then you’d better bring him back here and put him behind some nice, safe desk,” Foley said.

Patchen shook his head. “No. He’d resign. He doesn’t need us—he’s as well known as a journalist in the outside world as he is as an agent in ours.”

“What you’re telling me is that you have no control over him at all.”

“No, I’m not telling you that. Control is not necessary. He feels about the outfit the way you felt about John Kennedy. He’d do nothing to harm us, or the country. Of course, his idea of what’s harmful to the United States might not be the same as yours.”

Foley stared at Patchen, and then Patchen saw an idea being born behind Foley’s eyes.

“Has Christopher ever been like this before—hooked on something?” Foley asked.

“Lots of times. He’s usually been right.”

“He’s usually been right, or he’s usually come up with data that supported his theory?”

“It’s the same thing,” Patchen said.

“It’s not. When was the last time he saw a psychiatrist? Don’t you have regular psychiatric controls on guys like him?”

“Psychiatric controls? When a man breaks down, we take care of him, that’s all.”

Foley said, “I’ve seen this guy twice. Both times he’s been compulsive about something. It could be a pattern.”

Again Patchen said nothing. A pulse was beating in Foley’s temple; Patchen watched that.

“Christopher may have done great things in the past,” Foley said. “I don’t doubt it for a minute. But how long has he been out there—ten years, twelve? He’s showing it. He needs a rest, David. You must have a quiet place where he can recuperate.”

Patchen showed no surprise because he felt none. Foley, a much larger man, stood over him, giving off an odor of cologne and whiskey. Patchen understood how a woman about to be fondled by a man she does not want must feel. Foley, crude and emotional, seemed to him a ridiculous figure. Patchen’s lips parted in a smile.

“Why don’t you put that suggestion in writing,” he said, “and channel it to me through the Director?”

Foley departed, leaving his glass of water untasted. Ordering Patchen to fetch it for him had been a way of emphasizing the difference in their ranks. In Foley’s place, Patchen would have made the gesture at the end of the conversation, not at the beginning.

4

When Christopher came back into the house, Patchen played the tape recording of his conversation with Foley. Neither man said anything; the listening devices in Patchen’s living room were voice-activated transmitters that could not be switched off. They put on their coats and went outside.

“The bars must still be open,” Patchen said. “Let’s walk. “I’d like a beer.”

They were alone on the sidewalk, and when they reached Connecticut Avenue the broad street was empty of cars, though the automatic traffic signals went on working: the lights changed to red along its whole steep length, like cards falling out of a shuffler’s hand.

“What now?” Christopher said.

“It’s over. The problem is, Foley believes you. He doesn’t want your theory proved.”

“You’re willing to drop it?”

“Of course. If the White House doesn’t want it, we won’t do it.”

“Well, it would have been nice if we’d got some Texan instead of Foley to talk to,” Christopher said.

“The answer might have been the same. If the truth is known, the truth will come out. Nobody wants that—not even you.”

“We know lots of truths that never come out, David.”

“Not on this scale. This couldn’t be hidden. It would blacken the name of the dead President. It would stand foreign policy on its head.”

They were in front of a bar, and Patchen started toward its door. “Let’s stop outside a minute,” Christopher said. “You know what’s involved here, David. If these politicians never know what happened, they’ll do it again.”

“Yes. They will.”

“You don’t think that’s worth preventing?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to prevent it, Paul. You have a flaw—you think the truth will make men free. But it only makes them angry. They believe what suits them, they do what they want to do, just like the slobs we’re going to find lined up at the bar in there. Human beings are a defective species, my friend. Accept it.”

“But don’t you want to
know?”

“Sure I do—I even say we should know, that we’re doing damage to the outfit, not to say the country, if we don’t pursue this to the end. But we don’t run operations against the United States government.”

“Foley is not the United States government.”

“Foley would say you’re talking treason.”

“I’d say that’s pretty melodramatic,” Christopher said. “We were told from the beginning that our job is to keep the water clean. We feed the politicians information, they do what they want with it. But we don’t doctor the information to suit political purposes, much less the emotional purposes of a short-timer like Dennis Foley. What Foley wants from us is a kind of treason —his illusions are more important than the truth.”

“That’s what I just got through telling you.”

“We don’t seem to be understanding each other very well, David. Would it help, do you think, if we spoke German?”

“Paul, you really are an arrogant bastard,” Patchen said. “Your whole career has been a series of moral lessons for the rest of us.
You
won’t use a gun.
You
won’t betray an agent.
You
won’t give support to a regime that tortures political prisoners.
You
won’t countenance a coup against the Ngos, even though you’ve done more than anyone else to create a political opposition to them. Only
your
means justify the end. People have been telling me for years that you’re more trouble than you’re worth, and I’m beginning to see the point.”

Patchen’s voice did not change its tone; he might have been reading aloud from a newspaper.

“I guess I’m lucky to have had you as a protector,” Christopher said.

“I can’t protect you from these people. You’re out in the open now, and they sure don’t like the look of you.”

“Foley’s an amateur.”

“We would have said the same thing about Lee Harvey Oswald.”

“Yes, but he was operating against other amateurs.”

“And he had professional advice.”

“Yes, I think so.”

A man and a young girl came out of the bar, holding hands. They stood in the doorway for a moment, looking up and down the street for a taxi.

“Have you tried the Cantina d’Italia, up the street?” Patchen asked Christopher, in a louder voice. “I think it’s the best Italian restaurant in the world, outside of Italy.”

The couple walked by Christopher and Patchen and crossed the street to the taxi stand in front of the Mayflower.

“You realize you’re not going to be able to go out under our auspices,” Patchen said. “Foley will have been on the phone to the Director. It won’t be permitted.”

“Then I’ll do it on my own.”

“You may die.”

“That’s always a possibility.”

Patchen let a moment pass before he answered. “You really don’t care, do you?” he said.

“Yes, I care. Less than some, I guess. I’ve never liked the death of others.”

“How are you going to handle it?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. I want to understand what happens to you.”

“I’ll either find out very quickly or not at all,” Christopher said. “I’ll have to walk in on them and tell them what I think, and watch the reaction. I think they may want it to be known.”

“Want
it to be known?”