wheelchair.
No one ever said a thing. What could be said? The act had no meaning except for the tragic randomness of the universe, its cruel whimsy. What’s the line: Whom the gods destroy, they first make interesting? Possibly I made that one up. Or possibly it’s Vod speaking. But in outline, anti-Oedipal dynamics are visible. The father, so long thought a great man, sees his usurpation in his young son. He loves the boy, but a serpent of ego whispers into his subconscious: He will replace you. He will steal your memory. You have given him everything, he will take everything. you are soon to become a supernumerary. Thus the gun falls from the hands, thus the safety is perhaps not forcibly off but wedged gently into that no-man’s-land between on and off, thus by freak mischance or the weird imposition of evil will on a falling object, the muzzle is lined up for one tenth of a second on Lon’s lower spine, and the rifle discharges.
He was lucky, I suppose. It was S4. No quad, no respiratory problems, no iron lung, no electric wheelchair or writing with a paintbrush by mouth. Muscular and athletic, he adapted well. He could drive, he could prepare food, his mind was intact, he could dress, drink, laugh, read, watch, work at his bench. S4, so much more mercy than C2. Still. .
What is his subconscious making of all this? Perhaps he has felt the hate under the love, perhaps he has heard a whispered resentment in all the lavish praise, perhaps he knows his father a little better than the father knows himself. He suppresses. He conceals his feelings. As I’ve said, he gets on with it. Who knows what snakes have been released into his mind, what need to strike and kill fathers universally or fathers symbolically or sons who, like him, were created by their fathers and then surpassed them. No one knows any of that, least of all I, but it may explain why, at some level, Lon was okay with the monstrosities I pitched him and kept the faith to the very end. In fact: he died of the faith.
In late October 1963, none of this could be imagined. I told myself I had a question for Lon that needed answering, perhaps denying to myself the inevitability of the course I had set up. I did know that I couldn’t be affiliated by record in phone contact from house or office, and I was aware that nobody knew whom that devious busybody James Jesus Angleton was or was not wiretapping. My solution to this was to drive downtown on a Saturday afternoon wearing suit and tie, park around Fifteenth at N, walk up N, and stride boldly into the office building at 1515 upon whose facade the words “The Washington Post” were emblazoned in some sort of ancient Gothic typeface. In those days, newspapers were wide open to the public, especially if the public looked as Official Person as I did, in dark tie, dark suit, white shirt, horn rims, and natty little Princeton haircut, as it was called. I strode in, nodded at the ever-sleepy Negro guard, and took the elevator to the fifth floor, where the newsroom was sited.
It was hardly a tenth full, as a skeleton crew watched teletype machines or took dictation from far-flung correspondents on the rare breaking-news stories. I sat down at Marty Daniels’s desk, aware that I looked a little like Marty, who covered the Defense Department for the
I got Monica, she put me through to Lon in the shop, and I said hello.
“Hugh, how’s my favorite secret agent? Have you caught Dr. No yet?”
“The slimy bastard changed lairs on us again. He found a new volcano. And how’s my favorite cripple?”
“You know, Hugh,” said Lon amiably, “I thought I felt a sexual impulse below my waist the other day, but it turned out to be a house falling on my knee.”
We both laughed. I had followed his steps to Choate and Yale. He was five years older, and I’d gone down to New Haven my senior year to watch him on the football field, where I took great pleasure in the way he left the Harvard Bambis smashed and bloody in his wake. That was his strength deployed in righteous fury!
“Seriously, how are you doing, Lon?”
“I’m fine except for the ulcers on the leg. They don’t hurt, but they’re a little annoying. I’ve got a piece due for the
“Just spying away like a busy little beaver,” I said. “Spy, spy, spy, all day long!”
Soon enough, our jocularity out of the way, I progressed to issues. “Lon, something has come up on the job, and I thought I’d run it by you.”
“Good Lord, Hugh, I’d think if anybody’d have experts on this sort of thing, it would be you fellows.”
“I’m sure we do, but it’s the weekend, nobody spies on weekends. Plus, it will take three days to go through and three days to come back via channels. You probably know more than they do, anyway.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’ve come across a reference to” – I pretended to withdraw it from memory – “something called an ‘Eye-tie Mannlicher-Carcano six-five.’ Now, I am a professional intelligence officer, so I have been able to determine that ‘Eye-tie’ probably means ‘Italian.’”
“Excellent, Hugh. I feel we are well protected.”
“Indeed. But the rest, other than the fact that it’s from the firearms world, is gibberish.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know too much about it. It could refer to the rifle or the cartridge, depending on context. Or both. Anyhow, the rifle was the Italian service rifle beginning in 1891 and running through the late fifties. It was probably the worst service rifle of its generation, less effective in every respect than the German Mauser, the British Lee-Enfield, our own Springfield, even the French Lebel. But they kept making ’em in various iterations, including a short cavalry or ski troop version.”
“I see,” I said. “How would an American get one?”
“Very classified. Buy a stamp. That’s the secret. When the Italians joined NATO, they converted to our arms – you know, the garand, the .30-caliber machine gun, the carbine, the .45 automatic – so they sold off a billion or so of the Mannlicher-Carcano rifles in various formats as surplus, and a great many of them came into this country, where they are being sold as downmarket hunting rifles by mail-order gun houses. I see ads for them all over the place. These guys put a cheesy Jap scope on them and sell them as deer rifles for the workingman who can’t afford a Winchester Model 70.”
“So it’s no sniper rifle?”
“It’s basically a piece of junk. Barely accurate, shoddily made, ugly as sin, with a cranky bolt throw. It shows that the Italians never took war seriously, particularly when you compare it to a brilliant piece of engineering like a Mauser. Now, the cartridge it shoots is more interesting and probably deserved a better rifle than the Mannlicher. It’s a mediumbore, flat shooting round, meant for battle at more or less longer ranges. The bullet is heavy for its size, with a thick copper coating to hold it together on those rare occasions when Italian marksmanship prevails. It’s a viable round for just about any thin-skinned game animal up to and including a whitetail. I’d use it on a man before I’d use it on a bear.”
“If you hit a man in the head with it?”
“Good-bye head, assuming a relatively short range, out to two hundred meters.”
“Hmm,” I said, by which utterance I meant information received but not processed.
“What have you got in mind, Hugh? Is this about some kind of Cuban invasion operation because you have a line on ten thousand Mannlicher-Carcanos real cheap? If so, I’d strongly suggest that you avoid the temptation. There’s a lot better rifles available in surplus than pieces of junk manufactured by people who eat spaghetti for lunch and take a nap every afternoon.”
“Thanks, Lon. Let me ask you this – what can you do with it?”
“
“No, no, that’s not what I meant. I suppose I meant could you – uh – counterfeit it?”
“You mean build a fake one? Good God, Hugh, that’s ridiculous.”
“I’m not explaining myself well, because I don’t have the vocabulary. I’m thinking about forensics, about the clues guns leave that identify them. It’s not something I know anything about except from
