“Well, they’ve decided. It’s not safe for you two to be around for the next six months or so.”
“Why now?”
“Too many people raising hell about the Warren Commission’s findings. All sorts of investigative committees are being set up. Some official, some not. But all of them looking for blood. CIA and FBI blood preferably.”
“What’s that mean, Ziggy? Mexico?”
“No.” He belched reflectively. It seemed appreciative rather than vulgar, and Petersen, who was a film buff, recalled fleetingly that Charles Laughton in Henry VIII had belched like that. “You’ll be going to England,” Grabowski said. “You won’t be so noticeable there.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Our people have rented a house for you up in the north near the border with Wales.”
“Wales isn’t north, Ziggy. It’s west.”
“What’s the name of the other place then?”
“Scotland.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“And what do we do?”
“They want you to do a report on all your work and thinking. The theoretical stuff with all those Kraut and Latin words, and all the practical stuff. When you’ve done that we’ll see what else we can find you.”
“Sounds like white-washing stones at boot camp,” Petersen said, and he didn’t look amused.
Grabowski shrugged his huge shoulders. “That’s what you’re gonna do, my friends. Nobody’s asking. It’s an order.”
“Who’s given the order, Ziggy? Was it Helms?”
Grabowski ignored the question. “You’ll get full overseas allowances. The accommodations and upkeep will be on the house, and it’ll all count for your seniority.”
“When do we go?”
“Tonight. You’re booked on a flight to Prestwick which they tell me is the nearest airport.”
“Jesus, Ziggy. I’ve got things to arrange. We both have.” Symons’s face had lost its Boston cool but Grabowski had had twenty years of dealing with all sorts of men, and Ivy Leaguers were the easiest of the lot. So long as you didn’t let them argue.
“We’re going back to Langley now. You can both of you tell me all the things you want doing and I’ll get them done. Neither of you goes back for anything.”
“What about clothes and passports?”
“You’ll have an allowance for buying clothes out there and you’ll be having new passports. Canadian ones. New names, new IDs.”
Grabowski stood up, walked over to the counter and paid the bill. He smiled to himself as the two men followed him out. They were going to be no problem. They would do as they were told all right.
The only concession that had been made was to let them take a crate of text-books, half a dozen cans of film, and a few bundles of scientific papers. Grabowski had gone with them on the shuttle to New York so that their point of exit wasn’t traceable to Washington. As they sat drinking in the departure lounge Grabowski handed over an envelope to each of them.
“You’ll find details in there with two telephone numbers. The first of them is for routine communications but only when it’s really necessary. The second is for a real emergency. I don’t expect you to use that. You’ll be contacted every two weeks and you’ll be under surveillance most of the time.”
“Are there any restrictions on travel?”
“You’ll find the ground rules in your envelopes. One thing is for sure: you don’t talk to anyone about anything except social chit-chat. And you don’t reveal your real identities or your status. Not to anybody. Not even the Queen of England.”
Symons risked a glance at Petersen’s face and saw his colleague’s irritation at Grabowski’s banality. Symons wondered what sort of ranking Grabowski had. He seemed to have no official title and they had no idea who he reported to, but he had all the clout he needed, and they had both seen him at ease and using his authority on far senior agents to themselves. Somebody high up in the CIA seemed to use Ziggy Grabowski as his personal tracker dog, sniffing the air and herding the wayward back into the flock.
Grabowski walked across the tarmac with them and stood smiling, with his arms folded, until the last passenger was on board the jumbo and the doors had been fastened and the ramps pulled away. Symons could see him standing by the fuel bowsers, shading his eyes against the setting sun as the aircraft rolled forward along the feeder to the main runway.
The dawn was already glimmering six and a half hours later when they landed in Scotland. The Texan who met them as they passed through with their luggage was young, amiable and energetic. He had made arrangements for their wooden crate to go through customs and had arranged for a carrier to deliver it the next day.
It was a two-hour drive, the last hour giving glimpses of a heavy grey sea and a few farmhouses with their lights already on. The Texan wasn’t a talker and Petersen, uncurious about the scenery, slept as Symons looked out of the car window.
As they passed an old castle built up high on a rock-face the Texan said, “Bamburgh Castle. That’s where Polanski filmed his Macbeth.” Symons didn’t reply. Petersen was the film buff.
Symons saw a sign that said, “Craster ½m,” and the car swung left down a narrow lane, and then a couple of hundred yards later left again between two wrought-iron gates. The gravel drive sloped steeply upwards and at its crest it curved right and they saw the grey stone house. It was a typical eighteenth-century Northumberland gentleman’s house. Not as large as a manor house but bigger than even a large farmhouse. It stood in a saucer-like depression with wide gravel paths in front of the house and its outbuildings. It had the dignity of nice proportions but it had been built less for beauty than to defy the long, northern, winter storms and the invaders from over the border.
The cover story for the two Americans was built on the truth. They were on sabbaticals, using the time, as Canadian medical historians, to do research on their subject regarding European medicine from the
