The people of the Soviet Union thank you.
Kaverin returned to the boardinghouse in the Old East Dallas part of town, opened the trunk of the DeSoto after making sure no one could see him—and no beat police officers were nearby—and emptied the pockets of the men he’d just shot. He found a fob containing the key to the front door of the boardinghouse and one to room number 2. He walked slowly up to the front door, checked to make sure he was alone, and then entered their room.
The men had not been inside that morning—after the scare with the police—but they had apparently stored some things there: several suitcases, containing clothes, money, ammunition, binoculars and Spanish to English dictionaries. He pulled out a penknife and began to look for secret compartments. He found none.
At about 12:45, he heard a commotion from the hallway, voices speaking urgently. He thought at first it might be the police, that he’d been tracked here, or that someone had seen an unidentified man entering the boarders’ room.
His hand on his pistol, he walked to the door, leaned close and listened.
“Did you hear? Did you hear?” a woman was calling, the words sliced by hysteria. “The President’s been shot! They think he’s dead!”
“No! Are you sure?” A man’s voice.
Someone began to sob.
Kaverin released his grip on the Colt, looked around the room and walked to the television set. He turned it on and sat in a creaking chair to wait for the device to warm up.
The time was 2 a.m., the day after the worst day of his life.
Special Agent Anthony Barter was trudging along the sidewalk to his apartment in Richmond, Texas. He’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours and he needed a little sleep—just a nap, really—and then a shower.
Then he’d return to the hunt for Lee Harvey Oswald’s assistant or savior or bodyguard or whatever he was: the Russian spy, Mikhail Kaverin.
The fallout was bad. Barter had kept his own superiors at the FBI and the Secret Service informed of every fact he’d learned about the spy from the moment he’d gotten the report from New York. But it was finger-pointing time now and Washington wanted to know exactly, minute by minute, what he knew and when he knew it and why he wasn’t more vocal about the threat to Kennedy.
“Because it wasn’t a threat at first,” he’d explained to the assistant director of the FBI in Washington. “We thought he was after classified weapons information. His behavior was suspicious but he didn’t seem dangerous.”
The assistant director had barked, “Well, the President of the United States is now suspiciously dead, Barter. I thought you were tailing him.”
Barter had sighed. “I was. He evaded me.”
He didn’t say “us.” Barter didn’t shift blame.
“Jesus Christ.” The man told him that J. Edgar Hoover personally would be calling him at some point tomorrow. And slammed the phone down. At least that’s what Barter imagined. He heard only a click, then static.
So this is what the demise of a career looks like, he thought. His heart clutched. Being a special agent was the only job that had ever appealed to him, the only job he’d ever wanted. His passion for the FBI went back to seeing newsreels about G-Men, to reading comic books about Elliot Ness, to watching movies like Gang Busters over and over again at Saturday afternoon matinees, while munching popcorn and sipping fizzy grape soda pop.
But his future wasn’t the first thing in his mind at the moment. All he cared about was finding Lee Harvey Oswald’s accomplice, finding Kaverin. For a moment he was flushed with anger and he hoped that, if he found the man, the Russian resisted arrest so Barter could put a bullet in his head. Even as he thought this, though, he knew it was an unreasonable, passionate reflex; the reality was that he would arrest the man, following procedure to a T and interrogate him firmly but respectfully.
The problem, of course, was finding him. Since he’d been Oswald’s protector, and the assassin was now in custody, Kaverin was probably long gone. Barter guessed he was probably on a steamer headed back to Russia. Still, Barter was doing everything possible to find the man. The instant he’d heard of the shooting, he had sent the Russian’s picture to every law enforcer in Texas and neighboring states and made sure the nearby airports and the train and bus stations were being watched. The automobile rental agencies too (ironically the Texas Book Depository was crowned with a huge Hertz billboard, touting Chevrolets). Roadblocks were set up, as well, and the docks along the Texas coastline were being searched by local police, FBI and the Coast Guard.
As every minute passed without word of a sighting, Barter grew more and more angry with himself. Oh, hell, if he’d only done more digging! Oswald had been under investigation by agents in his own office! The man had tried to defect to Russia, he was actively procommunist and had recently been in Mexico trying to get visas to Cuba and Russia. If that investigation had been better coordinated, Barter might have put the pieces together.
Now approaching his apartment, Anthony Barter paused, fished out his keys and stepped to his door, thinking: Okay, I’ll have one Lone Star beer. Yes, agents were not supposed to drink. But considering that tomorrow Mr. Hoover would tell him that he was soon to be an ex-agent, liquor was one vice that he wouldn’t have to worry about keeping secret any longer.
Barter walked inside, closed the door and locked it. He was reaching for the light switch when he heard, behind him, a floorboard creak. Special Agent Anthony William Barter’s shoulders slumped. He thought of his failure to the Bureau, to his country—and to his President. He was almost relieved when the Russian agent’s pistol muzzle touched the back of his head.
“How the hell did you find me?” Anthony Barter asked.
Mikhail Kaverin briefly studied the FBI agent, whose hands were shackled with his own cuffs. The Russian was impressed that the man seemed merely curious, not afraid. He returned to his task, which was using a penknife to slice open the lining of his attaché case.
Barter noted this surgery but seemed uninterested in it. His gaze was fixed ruthlessly on his visitor.
“How did I find you,” Kaverin mused, slicing away. He explained about observing the agent’s surveillance at the grocery store.
“You saw me?”
“Yes, yes, we’re trained to notice that. Aren’t you?”
“Not many people follow FBI agents. It’s usually the other way around.”
This made some sense.
He explained about his ruse at the Piggly Wiggly. The FBI man squinted his eyes shut in disgust. Then he sighed. “Okay, you didn’t kill me,” Barter said evenly. “So you’re going to kidnap me. Negotiate my life for safe passage out of the country.” He then said in a low, defiant voice, “But that isn’t going to work, my friend. We don’t negotiate with scum like you. Assassination’s the most cowardly act imaginable. You and your countrymen’re despicable and whatever you do to me, that won’t stop our entire law enforcement apparatus from finding you and making sure you’re arrested—and executed. And there’ll be sanctions against your country, you know. Military sanctions.” He shook his head in seeming disbelief. “Didn’t your superiors think through what would happen if the President was killed?”
Kaverin didn’t respond. He turned his attention to the agent. “We have not made introductions. I am Major Mikhail Kaverin of the Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie.”
“I know who you are.”
Kaverin wasn’t surprised. He said, “Well, Special Agent Barter, I have no intention of kidnapping you. Nor of killing you, for that matter. I found it necessary to come up behind you and relieve you of your weapon so that you would not act rashly—”