V.T. paused and gave him an odd look. 'Yes, so it seems. Although… no, let's not get into it now. Where were we? Yes, the anticommies. In Dallas, Oswald was welcomed with open arms by a group of violently anti-communist White Russians, like George de Morenschildt, Viktor Bezikoff, Armand Gaiilov, and others-not something you'd expect them to do for an actual Red. Also, on his return to New Orleans in 1963, Oswald hooked up with Gary Becker, a notorious right-winger, and Becker apparently recruited him to infiltrate pro-Castro student organizations. That seems to be the origin of the famous Fair Play for Cuba incident. Oswald hands out pro-Castro leaflets and gets into a scuffle with anti-Castro Cubans and gets arrested. He even goes on the radio to debate some anti- Castro Cuban about communism. Unfortunately, when he printed up the leaflets he used the address of Becker's organization, the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, 544 Bank Street, on the pro-Castro leaflets. Very odd. Finally, there's the Sylvia Odio incident. Three men identifying themselves as members of an anti-Castro organization show up at the Odios' Dallas apartment one evening in September 1963. Odio's dad is a big anti- Castroite and a political prisoner in Cuba. Two of these guys are Cubans, one's an American who calls himself Leon. They talk a lot about killing Kennedy because of how he betrayed them at the Bay of Pigs and after the missile crisis. When Kennedy is shot the next month, Odio IDs 'Leon' as Oswald. Everybody who's ever talked to Odio swears she's right on, but of course Warren discounted her evidence.'
'This is old stuff, V.T.,' said Karp. 'What's the point?'
'Wait. Now we come to the CIA connection. Oswald works at one of the most secret bases in the military, Atsugi, Japan, where they launch U-2 spy planes against Russia. He has a secret security clearance. Atsugi also happens to be the regional CIA center. At this time, although Oswald is boasting he's a commie and a Russian spy, nobody does anything about it. In fifty-nine he gets out of the marines, and despite the fact he has almost no money, he somehow gets the fare to fly to London. Then he gets to Helsinki in some way on a day when there's no commercial London-to-Helsinki flight, crosses over by train, goes to Moscow, and talks with an embassy official with strong CIA links. He defects, works in Minsk for a while, marries a Russian girl, redefects to the U.S., all without an instant's difficulty with passports or transit. This is in an era when famous people are getting their passports pulled for even the faintest pink associations. The capper to all this is that Marina Oswald paints a picture of her late husband as a feckless schmuck who could barely keep a job, just the kind of nutty loner who typically assassinates presidents of the United States. The guy apparently has no talent at all, except a talent for making big, powerful bureaucracies do anything he wanted. Oh, yeah: one other useful little skill. He can be in two places at once. In the month before the assassination, nearly a dozen witnesses have placed Oswald in interesting places-a firing range shooting his rifle, a rifle repair shop, a garage, a gas station-at times when we know he was somewhere else. And in all those places whoever it was made sure that people would remember him as Lee Oswald.'
'You're buying the double-Oswald story?' asked Fulton.
'I don't know. It's one explanation of the facts, with the only other one being that a bunch of unconnected people, solid citizens, lied in concert for no reason. But that's not crucial at the moment. What is crucial is that whoever Oswald really was, he's still the key to the mystery. All the threads cross on him, and that's why the most exciting thing we've uncovered so far is this document actually naming him as a contract CIA agent.'
Fulton stood up and stretched. He said, 'Well, you know, V.T., this is all very fancy, but I'm just a simple street cop. Maybe before we elaborate any theories we should locate this guy, what's-his-face, Veroa, and have a chat with him. And the wise guy, Mosca. That's what I'm gonna get started on, as soon as I come off the drunk I'm gonna go on now for getting into this pile of shit in the first place.'
'While you're at it,' said V.T., 'you could find out what old Lee was doing from August 21st to September 17th, 1963. The whole FBI was trying to find out his daily activities from his date of birth to the time he died, but nobody's ever been able to determine where he was or what he was doing for those twenty-seven days. Marina, naturally, says he was napping on the couch, but nobody else saw him during the period in question. All we know is that he was in the country on Labor Day; he visited his aunt.'
'His aunt, huh?' Fulton chuckled, a rumbling noise that could be by turns delightful or threatening. Now it was somewhere in between. 'That the same aunt that was seen coming out of the manhole on Dealey Plaza with the silenced forty-five? I'll check it out-it sounds like a real break.' He left.
V.T. stared at the closing door. 'He's pissed off. Not at me, I hope.'
'No, but like he said-he's basically a street cop. He gets nervous when he doesn't know the players or the neighborhood.' Karp rose, walked over to the greasy window, and stared out at an unpleasant vista of railroad tracks and freeways.
'Speaking of neighborhoods, this is the worst view available from any federal building in the area. Whoever decided to put us in this dump knew how to make a point.' He stopped as a familiar scratching noise sounded behind one of the walls. 'It also probably has more rats per square yard than any building they had available.'
'The FBI used to be here.'
'That explains it,' answered Karp with a brief laugh.
V.T. did not join in. Karp looked more closely at his friend. Newbury met his gaze briefly and then turned his eyes away, as if ashamed at what they might reveal. In the moment Karp had seen something he didn't like, something he had never seen in the man before. Exhaustion? No, like Karp, he had gone through the same murderous training in the old criminal courts bureau, and he had always turned up in court crackling fresh with a jest on his lips-he was famous for it. It was something deeper-a psychic depletion, the investigator's equivalent of the thousand-yard stare that afflicts infantrymen too long on the line.
'You look beat,' Karp offered. 'You should take the rest of the week off.' A joke; it was Friday afternoon.
V.T. said, 'I am beat. This defeats me. I believe I've contracted Oswald's Syndrome. Symptoms: a chronic and progressive inability to discern fact from fiction and role-playing from personality. Distinguishable from common psychosis by the odd fact that the underlying structure of reality gradually comes to mimic the imaginary world created by the sufferer. An occupational disease of spies, counterspies, and the people who study them. Speaking of spies, did you ever hear the odd story of Evno Azev? Doesn't ring a bell? Well, around the turn of the century Azev was the most successful terrorist leader in Russia and the head of an anarchist band called the Terror Brigade. These guys carried out dozens of successful assassinations of public figures, including the minister of the interior, von Plehv, and the czar's own uncle, the grand duke Sergei. In 1908, however, it was revealed that Azev was also a senior agent of the Ohkrana, the czarist secret police. He was planning all those assassinations, see, to get in better with the terrorists, so he could betray the terrorists. So it turned out that the chief antiterrorist agent was, in fact, the best terrorist of them all. When he was exposed, in fact, the terrorist movement totally collapsed. What am I getting at? Well, compared to Lee Harvey Oswald, and his many confreres, old Evno was… I don't know-who's authentic any more? Martin Buber? You? Maybe Oswald was his own double.'
V.T. got up and placed the CIA papers back into a folder. 'I think I will take the rest of the week off. And perhaps more. Call me when we get a budget.'
'Yeah, right. But aside from this new stuff, what else can we do meanwhile?'
'Find out who Bishop is,' said V.T. 'Although how to begin doing that I have no idea. Aside from that, we're dredging through the Senate material, making lists of follow-ups from the Warren stuff, Phelps is trying to get his hands on the autopsy photos and X rays… but it's all indoor sports. We need fresh stuff that hasn't been dragged over a million times, stuff from the field, stuff from new material, like this.' He rattled the papers in his hand. 'And without a settled budget…'
'Yeah, I know. We can't do serious investigation.'
'Any word on when we'll get one?'
'No, but I have a meeting with Crane later today. That's on the list. And I'll tell him about this CIA stuff, too. Maybe he has some ideas.'
V.T. started to leave.
'Take care of yourself,' said Karp. 'And be careful with that material. There's only three copies and I don't want any more made.'
'Leaks?'
'That, and theft.'
V.T. mimed an elaborate terror, clutched the file to his breast, and scurried out crabwise, looking rapidly from side to side over his shoulder.
When Karp arrived for his meeting, Crane was engrossed in a newspaper, cursing under his breath. 'Did you see this shit yet?' he demanded, tossing the paper across his desk. Karp took it and read the obvious story, a short piece above the fold on the front page, headlined 'Congressmen Balk on 'Police State' Tactics of Assassination
