Heat Lightning

now.”

SANDY CALLED. “Where are you?”

“John Blake’s office.”

“I’ll be right down.”

She had a file in her hand when she came through the door, and she passed it to him and he popped it open: anonymous stuff copied in a variety of fonts from different Web sites.

“Something I find very interesting,” she said. “Starting in the sixties, Sinclair had a lot to say about the CIA. They were assassins, they were counterproductive, they destabilized progressive countries, they propped up right- wing dictatorships, blah-blah-blah. All the usual stuff, nothing specific. Nothing you didn’t read in the newspapers. It sort of tapered off in the eighties and the nineties. But then…”

Big smile.

“What’s the big smile?” Virgil asked.

“Six years ago, a man named Manfred Lutz from Georgetown University wrote an article for Atlantic in which he said that Mead Sinclair basically made his reputation in the sixties counterculture by writing two lefty antiwar pieces, very well researched, very insightful, in Hard Times Theory magazine and another in Cross-Thought magazine, which Lutz says were small but influential magazines on the political left.”

“I think I knew that,” Virgil said. “I saw those names somewhere.”

“But did you know that Lutz claims that both Hard Times and Cross- Thought were CIA-sponsored vehicles?”

Virgil took that in for a few seconds, then he said, “I didn’t know that. Was he saying that Sinclair was a CIA agent?”

“No. Not exactly. He just lists Sinclair as among the people who benefited from publication in the magazines. Then, when that started a brouhaha, Sinclair apparently threatened to sue, and that shut everybody up. Sinclair’s position is that he didn’t believe that they were CIA vehicles, because they published too many progressive and hard-left articles, but even if they were, he didn’t know it at the time. They were leading left-wing publications who were willing to publish his articles, and to pay him for them, and that’s all he knew. He even joked that maybe they were CIA, because they were about the only left-wing magazines that actually paid anyone.”

“Where can I find Lutz?”

“He lives near Washington. I wrote his office phone number on the article,” she said.

“You’re amazing,” Virgil said. “I’ll call him right now.”

LUTZ HAD A dark, gravelly voice with a New York accent. “How’d you find me?” he asked when Virgil identified himself.

“One of our researchers did,” Virgil said.

“How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

“You could look up Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension online, call the number, and ask for Virgil Flowers.”

“How do I know the CIA hasn’t put up a spoof?”

“What’s a spoof?”

Lutz thought about the question for a minute, then said, “Ah, hell. I stand by my story, even if you are the CIA. The CIA sponsored those magazines. Period. End of story. I’m not talking about a little clandestine support-I mean, they were CIA fronts. They cranked out these mind-numbing leftist proclamations and articles, mind-numbing even for the time. In return, they had entree into all the left-wing intellectual circles of the time, both here in the U.S. and in Europe.”

AT THAT MOMENT, a man stuck his head in the door: he was chunky, square-faced, with short, curly hair and a bald spot at the crown of his head. He had small black eyes, fight scars under them, a nose that had been hit a few times. Virgil said to Lutz, “Hang on a minute,” and asked, “Mickey?”

The man showed some completely capped white teeth. “Yup, Virgil?”

“Sit down, I got a guy I gotta talk to.”

“I gotta shit like a shark, man.”

“Down the hall to the left…”

VIRGIL WENT BACK to the phone. “Okay, where were we? Listen, you not only suggest that the magazines were CIA fronts, you hint that Mead Sinclair and a couple of other guys were agents. Not dupes, but agents.”

“I’m still of that opinion,” Lutz said. “I can’t get it printed, because Sinclair says that it will harm his reputation and that he’ll sue. That scares everybody off, because I can’t provide any documentary proof. But that’s my opinion.”

“So how’d you get to that opinion?”

“Mostly because of the… smoothness of his arrival. One day you never heard of him, the next day he’s all over the place, publishing articles, giving speeches. And it’s not only that, it’s also the quality of the response. Sinclair would say something, and somebody in the government would actually respond to it, they’d debate him instead of ignoring him. That put him right in the heat of the battle-this terrific-looking blond guy with big ideas, who was willing to risk going to North Vietnam, to Hanoi, in the middle of the war.

“He gets arrested at demonstrations, but he’s always pretty quick to get out. Always the terrific PR photos. And if you look at it, and you’re cynical enough, you can see that it was certain congressmen and some people in the Johnson and Nixon administrations who actually made him into a lefty big shot. Because they gave him attention. And when you look at those people, you can see that every single one seems to have a tie to the intelligence community.”

Virgil didn’t say anything for a moment, and then, finally: “Interesting.”

Lutz said, “Yeah,” with a skeptical tone right there. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” Virgil said. “I’m trying to solve some murders that seem to go back to Vietnam.”

“If you solve them, and they do go back, I’d like to hear about it. I’d like to write about it,” Lutz said.

“Keep an eye on the news. The whole story is out there right now, and it’s getting bigger. I’ll give you my number.”

Virgil gave him his number, and Lutz said, “Virgil Flowers. That’s an operator’s name if I ever heard one. You’re really CIA, aren’t you? You’re gonna bug my house and my office and my car…”

“We don’t have to,” Virgil said. “We already replaced your fillings with microphones.”

Lutz laughed and said, “Maybe that’s why old ABBA songs keep running through my head.”

“Jesus Christ, we’re not that cruel,” Virgil said.

ANDRENO WAS wearing tan slacks and a powder-blue golf shirt, a thick gold chain around his neck. He chewed gum. Virgil looked at him and thought, Perfect.

“How ya doin’?” Andreno asked, shaking Virgil’s hand. His hand was still damp-from the water faucet in the restroom, Virgil hoped.

“Let’s get the other guys.”

They gathered in Virgil’s temporary office, Jenkins and Shrake and Andreno, and Virgil showed them the copies of the photographs.

“That’s pretty crude of old Ralph,” Jenkins said. He held one of the photos close to his face, studying the rape photo. “That’s him, all right.”

Shrake was looking at the other photos, took the rape photo from Jenkins. “But what if he just flat denies it- says he never went to Vietnam, that it’s not him… It could be somebody else.”

“Probably can’t get him for Vietnam,” Virgil said. “Too long ago, there’s only one witness still alive, and he probably wouldn’t testify anyway. We need to shake him up- Warren -freak him out. Get him to argue. We need to get him to give us something.”

“That’s gonna be tough,” Andreno said. “If he’s smart, he’ll keep his mouth shut. Deny, deny, deny. Imply a deal, acknowledge a deal, wink and nod, but not put it in words.”