"Where were we? Ruby, of course, did his part the following day. He had cancer, you know, and we took care of his family. By that time, the group had scattered. The Dallas police and the FBI combined to make a botch of the evidence. The seed was planted for a thousand conspiracies, of which our little impromptu would appear as just one. I must say, however, that you came as close as anyone to ferreting us out. Bishop was quite beside himself when he learned you had the film and were on to Mr. Mosca."
Karp ignored the implied compliment. "What about the grassy knoll shot?" he demanded. "Who did that?"
"That? If there ever was such a shot, I'm as much in the dark about it as you. Have you ever seen a bullfight? No? Well, on occasion, people in the stands become so overwhelmed by the event that they leap out into the arena and try to work the bull themselves. They call them espontaneos. That's what the Grassy Knoll shot was, I believe, an espontaneo, one of the many citizens of Dallas who wanted Kennedy dead. Perhaps it was another conspiracy; we certainly didn't have any fake Secret Service men about. Or perhaps it was an actual lone nut." He uttered a hacking chuckle. "Ironic, when you come to think of it. All that trouble, my precious PXK operation, the clever plans, and all we had to do was sit back and watch some idiot Birchers with a deer rifle do the job. In fact, if I were still hale, I could take you on a round of bars and barbecue joints in south Dallas and find half a dozen men who'd confess to being the trigger man on the grassy knoll. It's a wonder that anyone in Dealey Plaza survived the day."
Karp asked a few more questions, which Blaine answered with declining strength, about the murders committed as part of the cover-up. Blaine acknowledged them, but did not seem to know the details. He assumed they had been ordered by Bishop and carried out by Caballo.
"What about Gaiilov?" Marlene asked.
"Ah, yes. Very sad, and very coincidental. Do you know that just this morning poor Armand took his own life by means of a shotgun blast to the head?"
"Caballo again," said Karp.
"Mmm, I rather doubt it. Armand liked the high life. He was a tire salesman and failing at it. Perhaps it was a genuine suicide. So many people die from violence in this country that our occasional additions to the toll are hardly noticed. Some coincidences really are coincidences, you know."
As he listened, Karp found it oddly difficult to retain his interest: the crime of the century, one of the great mysteries of the ages, and it was starting to bore him. It was like being in a French chef's kitchen without the possibility of getting a meal, or like sex without orgasm: why bother?
There was a pause, a silence, broken only by Blaine's labored breathing. Then Marlene said, "Why? Why did you do it? I understand why Bishop and the Cubans did it, but what about you? Why did you want him dead?"
Blaine seemed to recover himself slightly. "Oh, that. He had to be eliminated, my dear. He was a Communist."
"Oh, come on! Kennedy was, if anything, a right-of-center Democrat, probably to the right of Johnson if it comes to that."
"Oh, no, I mean he was an actual Communist. A covert agent of the Soviet Union."
"Wha-a-a-t!" Marlene cried.
"Yes, it was hard for me to believe too, at first. Gaiilov gave me the story in the late forties. He'd been one of Beria's aides and the old monster boasted about it one night during the war. It didn't mean much then-who could've imagined that this frail little degenerate playboy would become president of the United States some day? But Armand remembered it, and when his own people were after him, and I saved his life, he told me. They'd recruited Kennedy in Prague, in 1939. His father had sent him on a so-called fact-finding tour of Eastern Europe. Pissed the State Department boys off no end. The NKVD leaped at the chance to compromise the son of one of America's most prominent rightists. They set a honey trap, not the hardest thing to do with JFK, and once he was in the hotel room, they drugged him and set up the cameras. An orgy scene, and not just with girls either. Once he got over his fright, he sort of warmed to the idea. It was a way of getting back at Dad, don't you know. He hated the old bastard, as who wouldn't? The Sovs let him sleep for a long time, of course. They had no idea he would become so prominent so quickly. He may even have imagined that with the war and all, the destruction, they might have forgotten. But when he was safely in the White House, they rang his bell. The Cuban sellout was the first payment. The Reds got a permanent base in the New World and the elimination of a bunch of missiles based in Turkey. And it was just the beginning."
"So you're saying it was simple patriotism!" said Marlene. "Why didn't you go to the authorities, for God's sake, way back then, if you knew?"
"Ah, but way back then, you'll recall, I had made myself persona non grata with the authorities, because of Dick and the trial. And I had compromised Gaiilov totally. No one would've believed him. And, of course, the Prague film we did not have."
"But Dick Dobbs was a spy and a traitor," said Marlene. "For all practical purposes, what you did for him released a vastly more damaging agent, assuming for a minute that I believe your Kennedy story. This is patriotism?"
A look of intense pain passed over Blaine's face, pain that was patently not of the body, pain against which morphine was impotent. "Yes. Quite correct. Of course I did stop what he was doing."
"Ah, right," Marlene exclaimed. "You must have turned the FBI onto Reltzin. He always wondered about that."
"Yes, I did that. And then I broke their case against Dick. All I can say in justification is to quote Mr. Forster: 'If I had to choose between betraying my friend and betraying my country, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.' " A long breath, a winning smile. "But, as you see, I made it right in the end."
They didn't speak at all during the ride back to the airport, not because the driver might have overheard, but because their minds had been thrown off track, and until they had done some thinking they lacked the ground for a meaningful conversation about what Harley Blaine had revealed. Marlene helped herself to several vodka tonics, but when she asked Karp whether he wanted a drink he shook his head and turned away, staring out at the darkening Texas sky.
In the airport lounge, Marlene finally broke the silence. "There are flaws, aren't there? In what he told us."
"Flaws? Flaws!" Karp expostulated. "Marlene, there are holes in that fucking story I could drive a tank through. JFK was a Communist spy? Give me a break! The guy's a fucking maniac, an assassination buff, except instead of saying they did it, he's saying we did it. Hey, you know what? This shit is enough to make anyone convert to the church of Warren. It's so simple. One nut, three shots, case closed. But then you start thinking about the flaws in Warren and add on all the coincidences and the bitty little connections and before you know it you're back at the Queen Ranch. Or in with the Mob, if that's your fancy."
"But all the evidence leads to Blaine," Marlene persisted. "He knew about all the stuff you found, the chessmen… and it fits him, the clever lonely boy who never changed, who never got the girl…"
"Marlene, cut the Psychology 101 crap! Do you honestly believe that John Kennedy was a conscious agent of the Soviet Union?"
For twenty seconds, Marlene tried hard to make herself believe it, if only for the poetic symmetry of the idea. Then she cursed and rolled her eye, and said, "No, hell, that's too weird even for me. The interesting question is whether Harley Blaine believes it."
"Why is that the interesting question?"
"Because this guy is the most fascinating character in the case. Him and Dobbs. Look, in 1950 they were on top of the world. Dobbs could've done what JFK did-House, Senate, Presidency. He was just as attractive, nearly as rich, had a better war record, and a lot more brains. Instead, he decided to screw it all up, and JFK walked off with the prize. And the fact that he was decent to Dobbs after the fall probably just added salt to the wound, from Blaine's perspective. That's one part of it. The other part is the crazy triangle with Selma-I don't even want to get into that. So, late fifties-he lost his career, lost his hopes for his friend, lost his great love. What does he have left? Control, manipulation. He convinces himself that this spy gossip is true, about JFK. Hell, people have convinced themselves of crazier stuff. And think how satisfying it must have been when he heard it from Gaiilov! A new focus for his life. And Harley just happens to be sitting on a plan for a failsafe hit on a president. How can he not try it out, and on such a deserving target? The Bay of Pigs fiasco gave him the troops he needed-and the rest…"