Boyd nodded without speaking.
“Your Washington telephone number is one that’s used by Grabowski’s mob. One of many all round the country. I did some checking with a pal of mine in communications and in fact it’s one of a couple of dozen numbers that aren’t even controlled by the CIA. They are controlled by a special high-security team from Fort George Meade. The National Security Agency. These numbers have all sorts of uses that vary from time to time depending on what’s going on behind the scenes with Grabowski. I spent twenty-eight solid hours checking what your particular number was used for.” Schultz paused and then looked at Boyd’s face. “I wish I hadn’t.”
Boyd waited for him to go on but he didn’t, he just looked morosely at the cigar he was stubbing out in the ashtray.
“You’d better tell me, Otto.”
Schultz looked up, and his sigh was deep and heart-felt.
“Now remember what I’m saying. I can’t prove this; and if I could I’d end up in the river. That number was a last resort contact for the Mafia in the six months before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. A last resort contact with the CIA. There’s no record I can find of the traffic on that line, but there is a phone-log in the archives that shows that, last resort or not, it was in constant use from June 1963 rising to a peak in November of that year, after the President was killed. Then the number lay more or less dormant until early May in 1968. Bobbie Kennedy was killed in LA in June 1968, since when that particular number has hardly carried a couple of dozen calls.” Schultz pursed his big lips. “Are you getting the drift of all this, my friend?”
“No. Not for my problem anyway.”
“I’m coming to your bit. With an emergency number as important as that the technicians put in a switching device. It has a list of numbers in sequence of importance that incoming calls are switched to if there is nobody manning the main number. Anybody on that line has a separate telephone that responds to that number only. You can’t make outgoing calls on it even, so that it’s always free. It was obvious by now that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with a straight enquiry so I called in some old, old debts that were owing me and I got the list of all those alternative numbers. Their actual normal phone numbers.
“The first number was Grabowski. The second was one of Grabowski’s senior men named Costello. The third was a CIA doctor named Symons. A psychiatrist. The fourth was a CIA doctor named Petersen. Also a psychiatrist. The rest don’t matter so far as you’re concerned, but they interested me.
“I then did another piece of checking on your stuff. I got a list from the Pentagon of dates and places where this Debbie Shaw performed. In a period of about eighteen months Symons was at the same camp as she was, on twelve occasions. I moved over to Immigration records and the print-out shows she came in and out at least four times after she ceased to be a performer. And that’s it, friend. That’s how it is tonight, as Cronkite says.”
As Boyd sat there absorbing Schultz’s information he remembered the words that Walker had said to Ansell—“You don’t like the Kennedys, do you?”
“What do we do, Otto? Where do we go from here?”
“If I had any sense I’d catch the next Pan Am flight out of here and go fishing for a month. How about your side? Has my information slotted into your piece at all?”
“There’s a lot of indications that one or both of the psychiatrists are over here. The ex-soldier and the girl have been used under hypnosis in the last two years. The girl had been used in the last four months. I’m almost certain of that. And it can’t be a coincidence that the guy you mentioned—Symons—was at the camps when she was. It was too often to be coincidence.”
“Go on.”
“You know what I’m driving at.”
“Maybe I do. But I want you to say it, not me.”
“This guy Symons is the direct connection. He can tell us what’s been going on. He needn’t talk about any US aspects. Just the UK scenario.”
“You don’t think he’ll actually talk do you?”
“Why not?”
“You realize what he’s been involved in?”
“More or less.”
“You don’t, James. But I guess that’s understandable. I’ve already tried to trace Symons and Petersen. So far as CIA records are concerned they don’t exist.”
“But you said you’d checked on the army camps where he and the girl had been.”
“I also said that those were Pentagon records. It was an accident that those existed. The CIA obviously don’t realize they exist. They weren’t operational records but nominal rolls so that rations and allowances can be drawn for officers and men accommodated at a camp. Routine administration. If he’d been a civilian on a camp his name would still have gone on the rolls. But he’s not on CIA records any more. Not even the confidential ones. Because he’s been stashed away somewhere. We’ve got dozens of official committees from the Senate downwards still investigating the Kennedy murders. And private investigation committees
