Also by Dale Peck
Sprout
Body
Surfing
The Lost Cities: A Drift House Voyage
Drift House: The First Voyage
What We Lost
Hatchet Jobs
Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye
The Law of Enclosures
Martin and John
To Lisa, Amelia, and Ethan
—T. K.
To my husband, Lou Peralta,
for his unwavering love and support
during the writing of this book
—D. P.
Contents
Prologue
Part 1: The Monroe Doctrine
Part 2: Orpheus Descends
Part 3: Orpheus Ascends
Part 4: The Truman Doctrine
Epilogue
Operation Mongoose
Project Eurydice
Our Man in Havana
Leary’s Little Trip
Department of Justice Building, Washington, DC - May 17, 1963
Captions
yet the gods sent Orpheus5 away from Hades empty-handed …
—Plato, Symposium
Dallas, TX
December 30, 2012
The apparition appeared at 11:22 a.m. over I-35, in the two-hundred-foot gap between the north- and southbound lanes where the interstate passed over Commerce Street. Traffic was heavy at that hour, but moving well: twelve lanes on 35, average speed sixty-six miles per hour, another six on Commerce traveling only slightly less fast. When the flaming figure appeared in the sky, the results were predictably disastrous.
According to the Texas State Highway Patrol, thirty-five vehicles collided with one another, resulting in seventy-seven injuries: cuts and bruises, whiplash, broken bones, concussions, at least three seizures. A pregnant woman went into labor, but both she and the baby—and, remarkably, everyone else involved in the pileup—survived the trauma. In addition to the injured, another 1,886 people claimed to have seen the apparition, making a grand total of 1,963, a figure later confirmed by both the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas Morning News. It was this last number that sent the story, already ricocheting around the airwaves and the Internet, into the stratosphere.
12/30.
11:22.
1963.
The time, date, and year that the thirty-fifth president of the United States had been assassinated, less than a quarter mile due east of the sighting.
It was possible—possible, though infinitesimally improbable—that this sequence was just a coincidence. Why hadn’t the figure appeared at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, skeptics were soon enough arguing on chat shows and blogs, the actual date and time of the assassination? What was harder for them to dismiss was the
