arrangements, how did he report, how could he be played? He’d have to confront those questions.
In Texas I’d put something before him. Something so seductive, he could not resist its temptation. He would have to go after it; it would be his grail. He would study the approach, sniff a dozen times, seem to go, then back off. He’d circle around, he’d look for signs, for disturbances, for indicators of preparation and ambush, and I’d have to prepare carefully enough to survive that scrutiny. And finally – weeks down the long and winding path before me – he’d make his approach, and then we’d have him.
Since he was by nature a gunman, and since guns were in a way his Yoknapatawpha, I understood instinctively that he’d come at me through the guns. He would have no choice. They were what he knew, his terrain; he was the master navigator of that small world, and he would feel the most confidence in that arena. But there was more. I could feel it as if it were just beyond a screen or covered by a sheet, its outlines barely visible, no details yet to be seen. It had to do with guns. Guns were at the heart of it. Alek’s junky little war-surplus Italian clunker, Lon’s sleek, excellent Winchester, the whizz of the bullet to the target, the extraordinary damage such a small piece of matter could engineer within flesh if propelled at the proper speed and–
Then I had it. The breakthrough. Quite a moment, when it feels as if God is whispering in your ear. No, He is otherwise busy, I’m sure. The rapping at your chamber door is from your subconscious, which has been engaged with the issue full-time, trying facts against possibilities, seeing if parts fit or must be discarded, testing, testing, testing all the time until that moment when, miraculously, it all comes together in perfect, stunning clarity.
What I needed was a physical object, a file, a confession, something tangible and palpable, which would prove the existence of our plot against Kennedy. I needed something Swagger would kill to get and, at the same time, risk death to get. To make it real, I needed a plausible narrative to sustain it. I had to invent documents to validate it, I had to have unimpeachable witnesses to verify it, I needed a realistic chain of events that would account for its whereabouts since 1963 and that put it within Swagger’s reach today. This is what my imagination created in one gushing rush of fact and detail.
I came up with a gun case containing Hugh’s Model 70, the suppressor, and some of the hybrid .264/Carcano ammunition, locked and sealed with shipping tags proving it was shipped from Dallas to Richmond on the night of November 24, 1963, by Braniff. I imagined a backstory by which it was lost and then found by a writer doing a bio on Lon/John who would need the help of someone with practical ballistic experience. I imagined Richard bringing them together.
The one thing I could not imagine would be Swagger’s refusal.
I must say that, though they cost me a fortune, the Joneses turned out to be worth every pretty penny. The profusion of old documents they produced was amazing. It turned out that Mr. Jones was some sort of paper expert who knew about thread counts, finishes, manufacturing processes, the effects of aging, and all the minutiae of what I suppose could be called the paper game. His true expertise was chemical; using a variety of magic potions out of little brown bottles that produced vapors, he could give a routine sheet of papyrus the brittle yellowness of age so accurately that it was laboratory-proof as to time of origin.
That product was dispensed to various nimble professional criminal figures under contract to people who were under contract to various other people who were under contract to me, and in a bit of time we’d inserted a document in the necessary file, which appeared to be the files of the Madison Avenue seventh-floor gun room of Abercrombie & Fitch, a legendary place that shipped Lon most of the rifles he decided he couldn’t live without.
The Joneses had access to a whole range of criminal fabricators I had no idea even existed. They were able to hire a contractor who built an exquisite replica of a 1958 Abercrombie gun case and had it suitably aged; they came up with a Model 70 of the appropriate vintage, a Unertl scope, aged bottles of Hoppe’s gun oil, and an ancient .264 brass brush. No luck on the German
Then there was the man who’d play the “writer” in whose care the gun case would be left. I couldn’t hire a con man or a real actor for this tricky role. It had to be an authentic firearms expert with great knowledge and a list of published volumes with whose work Swagger would be familiar. He had to be able to talk guns with Swagger, while Swagger was secretly monitoring the conversation, looking for telltale signs of a fraud. It had to be someone who was known to others in this field, so Swagger could get personal recommendations. Nobodies need not apply. Hmm, how would we settle this? I chose the expensive course, and the mission was given to my Israeli manhunters, those bird dogs of deceit and human weakness. In time they produced. They came up with a fellow named Marion “Marty” Adams, who, helpfully, had a character defect: a tendency toward larceny. As a known expert, he became a broker on many fine gun sales, the man who assured the buyer that it was indeed a rare first-model Henry rifle he was spending his $150,000 on and not a counterfeit. But there was so much more money in the counterfeits. Marty, it seems, was in the process of being sued by one enraged buyer, and if that became known, his reputation would be shattered, his career destroyed, and his bridge to the high end of the gun biz forever burned. Marty was approached; the offer was one he couldn’t refuse. He would quietly settle out of court with the plaintiff, paying an exorbitant punitive fine, and the case would disappear before causing damage to Marty’s reputation. Since Marty was an idiot with no money, cash and legal guidance would be our contribution. In return, he would be prepped to play a part in a larger deception, the point of which would never be clear to him.
There was one more figure, the lynchpin. That is, Our Man in Dallas, Richard Monk.
I decided to run him myself. I would do so by encrypted satellite phone, the most secure form of verbal communication in the world. I arranged for him to be given the implement, already dedicated to my number alone, so he couldn’t dial up sex talk from Vegas or make anonymous dirty calls to teenage girls in Tennessee at my expense. He would be the one man in the world who could reach me instantly and directly when the situation demanded it.
I knew I could not tell him he was tasked with leading Jack Brophy to his death in a violent commando ambush in which he might himself be winged or even terminated. He would flee to the moon by tomorrow noon. Or if he didn’t, Swagger would read the sick anxiety on his face like a road map. I told him a little fib as part of the briefing.
“I represent a venture group that has its eye on a nice collection of corporations. Alas, the sole owner of this group, a discreet, elderly WASP, cares not to discuss selling them to us at a reasonable price. Since we don’t kill, we have targeted the crown jewel of his collection for ruin, and when it collapses, it will drag down the stock prices of his other holdings. We will pounce, and he will wake up the next day a minority stockholder. We will buy him out for pennies on the dollar.”
“I see, but–”
“The crown jewel is an old and prestigious New York publishing house. We will swindle it, through your good efforts, into paying an outrageous sum for a book that ‘solves’ the Kennedy assassination, with the physical proof to make the case stick. That is why everything is arranged so carefully, as if we were the CIA. This is a deep deception. When the book is published to much huzzah, we will prove, through friendly journalists, that it is a hoax and that the publishing house has been deceived and is selling a fraudulent product that must be recalled. And thus falls the house of cards. Do you understand?”
“So it has nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination? Just some big-dough guys trying to outhustle each other?”
“No Q-and-A, Richard.”
“Yes sir.”
“Let us return to business. We expect in some time the man you know as Jack Brophy will make contact with you. Your job is to steer him, very carefully, to the man called Marty Adams. This should all be familiar to you.”
“It’s been pounded into my head.”
“You will brief me before and after every meet with Brophy.”
“Yes sir.”
“You will take
