“I’d say your wife is a little perturbed.”
“Can you get Nick more coffee?”
“He can get it himself too.”
“There you have it,” said Bob. “At any rate, I feel we made substantial progress. I feel I have cleared the brush away from any high-level Soviet involvement in this thing, and that any information that was in play in ’63 may have originated in the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, but it was available to other parties.”
“Meaning Agency.”
“They were the ones who were listening.”
“Now you want to focus on the Agency, 1963.”
“Yeah, I know, there’s not much left of that place at that time. It was so long ago. Everybody’s dead. Still, if people in the Agency knew Oswald took a shot at Walker, which they could have learned from their intercepts, that made certain things possible. They used the same model in 1993 in their operation against Archbishop Roberto- Lopez. Manipulate a patsy into place with a known rifle, engineer some sophisticated ballistic deceit, have the backup shooter make the kill shot that the patsy couldn’t be trusted to make, then betray the patsy. It was the same goddamn thing.”
“It’s a lot of could haves, might haves, possiblys, and maybes,” said Nick.
“There was nothing
True enough. Nick remembered the six-hundred-yard shot, the way the dust or debris vibrated into a puff when he put the bullet into the man and watched him slump back and disappear into his hide. Later, he remembered looking at him, crushed, so still, just wreckage. Great shot, somebody said. It wasn’t till later that Nick learned that Lon was wheelchair-bound, and though confined to the steel trap, had fought his way admirably to a righteous life, that is, until the end.
“The ops were similar, yes. But there’s something in Latin that means ‘Just because it came first, doesn’t mean it caused it.’ In other words, they could have planned 1993 on the model of what they thought happened in 1963 or what could have happened in 1963. Nothing that happened in 1993 proves anything about 1963.”
“It’s too goddamn provocative to be left alone. Agree with me on that. That’s the favor I’m asking. You’ve come this far. It’s worth a hard look, and people seem to be trying to kill me because I’m taking that hard look. And you remember the 1993 people even better than I do. One in particular.”
“I remember him,” said Nick, thinking of the frosty figure of a man called Hugh Meachum, who supposedly represented the “Buddings Institute of Foreign Policy” but clearly spoke for a larger, more secretive entity when he tried to convince Nick to testify against Bob.
“So. . are you going to help me?” asked Bob. “I know you’ve gone way out on a limb, but the fact that twice, high-priced, highly connected killers have tried for me, and that previously one of them killed James Aptapton, is evidence that we’re close to something.”
Nick shook his head.
“I know you’ve never really believed in this,” said Bob. “I’m not sure I do either. But I don’t know what to do except push ahead. Here’s one idea. The people who tried to take Stronski and me out were from an outfit called the Izmaylovskaya gang, known to be the most violent of the Russian mobs. They seem to be, by reputation, connected to an oligarch named Viktor Krulov, very powerful international presence, that sort of thing. Could we run a deep cyber-search of Krulov? See what connections he has to American businesses. My assumption is that whoever hired the Izzys had to do so under the auspices of Krulov. So if we get a shake-out on Krulov’s business affiliations in the U.S., we’ll know who was capable of making such an arrangement. There’s also one named Yeksovich. No, no, dammit, Ixovich. Weird name, huh? He owns some gun companies, and that might tie him to arms exports that might involve criminal activity and possibly the Izzies.”
“Yes, I will look into Krulov and Ixovich.”
“Okay, the next thing is Hugh Meachum.”
“He died in 1993.”
“Officially. That has to be looked at carefully.”
“I have. Unlike John Thomas Albright, whose life as Lon Scott was clumsily hidden, everything about Meachum’s death is perfect. All t’s crossed, all i’s dotted. I looked very carefully at the public documents, and they are complete,” said Nick.
“But he was a spy, one of the best. He would be good at that.”
“You can’t say that lack of evidence is evidence. Then it all goes crazy. That’s why all the conspiracy theories are bullshit. And I can show you his ashes.”
“Can his ashes be read for DNA?”
“No.”
“Aha!”
“Swagger, it proves nothing.”
“It was a joke.”
“He has three sons in the Washington area. They appear to be outstanding men, above reproach. I’m reluctant to engage them. Until we have something definite on Hugh Meachum, and we’re far from that, I have no plans to visit or otherwise agitate them. This is America; they are not responsible for anything their father may or may not have done.”
“Agreed,” said Swagger. “That would leave only other vets of Clandestine Services from the early sixties.”
“Most are dead. These are guys who lived hard. They fought the Cold War. And, it should be noted, won it. Paid a high price in alcoholism, divorce, breakdown, suicide, heart disease. Through the Retired CIA Officers Association, we have been able to locate only one, and he’s been institutionalized for over five years.”
“Agency records?”
“Hard to access unless you’ve got something to trade or hard data. You’ve done them favors, maybe you could get in contact.”
“I don’t know anyone there since Susan Okada died. And I hate to play that card.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I have an idea, though.”
“You attack the CIA with an M-16. When you’re captured, you escape and recapture your capturers, and we interrogate them.”
“Exactly. That’s it. What could go wrong? No, no, it’s actually subtle.”
“This I gotta hear.”
Swagger flew to Washington a few days later. It was a wretched flight through lightning and cloud, not smooth, and as usual, his mind would not settle down. He tried to nap, couldn’t, got up and went to the bathroom, earning displeasure from the flight attendant because the seat-belts sign was lit.
He returned, sat back, glad he had gotten an aisle seat, and tried once again to relax, tried again not to look at his watch or disturb the person next to him, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Of course not. Just a slumbering American male, teacher, salesman, lawyer, father, uncle, brother, what have you. Mr. Ordinary. Sleeping through it all.
But his hair was slightly disheveled, maybe that was it, like Oswald’s, and the next thing Swagger knew, he was back on the run with Ozzie Rabbit, who, despite the fact that he is the object of a city-wide manhunt and has only a limited amount of time to escape, has risked everything to return to the one place the police will expect him at any second to retrieve his revolver.
Why didn’t he have it with him in the first place?
A gun makes a man comfortable. Swagger remembered his own recent adventures with the .38 Super in Dallas and Comrade Ixovich’s GSh-18 in Moscow. Not using them, having them. The weight, the reminding pull on the waistline, the density, the pressure of the hard metal against the flesh. If you knew someone was going to try to kill you, that pressure was what let you operate. You were armed. You could fight. It was the enabler of all those who, for whatever reason, knew they would travel in violence’s way.
