On the night of the de Mohrenschildts’ party, February 13, or the night after the announcement of the Walker tour, February 14, Marina is not sure which, she heard Lee talking in his sleep. He spoke very loudly and enunciated each word so clearly that Marina sat upright in bed, thinking he was talking to her. But he was speaking in English, not Russian, and was repeating the same words again and again. Marina did not understand what he was saying, but it was the first time he had talked in his sleep since they were in Minsk, when Lee was making up his mind to return to the United States and was afraid that he would be arrested by American officials.
The next morning Marina repeated Lee’s words to him.
“Where did you find that out?” Lee looked stunned.
“You told me in your sleep.”
“Wake me up next time.”
“And what were you saying?” Marina as always was afraid he was talking about an old girlfriend.
“Nothing at all.” He smiled out of his enigmatic smiles. “Better for you not to know.”
“I’ll know all your secrets soon.”
Again, he said nothing. But he was anxious after that and once or twice in the weeks that followed asked whether he had talked in his sleep the night before.
Right after the initial announcement, there were more stories about Walker’s anti-Communist, anti-Castro crusade. They made Walker seem very real, very human, and very close. Indeed, he was close; he lived in Dallas just across the river from Lee. The stories must have been electrifying to Lee, yet filled him with anxiety at the same time. Either he must kill Walker right away, or he would have to wait for six weeks, until Walker returned from his tour. Meanwhile the revolver had not arrived, a choice of weapon that indicated that Lee meant to kill Walker at close range and at the risk of his own life. There seemed to be no question of obtaining another weapon. Lee was not the man, at any time, to show his face in a gun shop and buy a weapon openly.
Lee was apparently very anxious for his gun to arrive. His colleagues John Graef and Dennis Ofstein remember that he was always headed for the post office when he left work, and yet whenever they offered him a ride he invariably declined. He was checking for his gun. He could pick up a package at the post office only between 8:00 and 5:30 on weekdays, hours when he was normally at work, or between 8:00 and 12 noon on Saturdays. On Friday, February 15, the day after the Walker trip was announced, Lee signed out of work at 5:15 P.M., early enough to pick up a package at the post office. The next morning, Saturday, for the only time in all his months at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, he signed in at 9:00 A.M., a full hour later than usual, an indication that he may again have stopped by the post office hoping to pick up the revolver. It was not there.
That same day Lee received another piece of news that must have confounded his plans and emotions—until he found a way to fit them together. Marina told him on his return from work that she was pregnant. This time she was sure of it. Lee was pleased. Marina was not. What do you expect, he asked, when you don’t even bother to take precautions? June had had her first birthday only the day before, and Lee said: “Very good. Junie is one year old, and Mama is cooking up a present. A baby brother. What better present could there be?” He crowed and exclaimed for a day or two, and then, uncharacteristically, he seemed to forget all about it. He did not take Marina to a doctor.
On Sunday, February 17, the Dallas Morning News carried a long feature story on Walker’s “crusade.” It was the story that made Walker seem the closest and most human of any, and it stressed the anti-Castro side of his trip. On that very day Lee made good his earlier threats. He forced Marina, a Soviet citizen, to sit down and write to Nikolai Reznichenko, chief of the consular section of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, asking officially that she and June be allowed to return to the USSR alone, without Lee. In a message that was dictated by Lee, Marina asked the embassy to give her “material aid” for the journey. Having moved heaven and earth to get his wife and child out of Russia, Lee, less than a year later, was asking the Soviet government to pay for their return.[7]
Marina’s handwriting, which is usually neat, was sloppy and the message brief and casual, almost to the point of disrespect. She must have been distraught and seems also to have been seeking to sabotage her husband’s purpose. She adored America and had constantly pleaded with Lee: “Do anything. But don’t ever, ever make me go back!” She had no idea of her husband’s motive, nor did he say a word to enlighten her. And so she simply supposed that he no longer loved her and that she had become to him what she had been to nearly everyone else all her life, unloved and “in the way.” She would be going back to relatives who did not want her and with the stigma of her husband’s rejection. All this, plus her pregnancy, was very nearly more than she could bear.
Marina was waking up to how calculating Lee could be—and how far ahead he laid his plans. But she merely suspected that he wanted her out of the way in time for expenses of the new baby’s birth to be paid by the USSR, and, in part, she was probably right.
Yet Lee usually had several objectives at once. For one thing, he seldom slammed a door. He always left it open a crack just in case he decided to pass through again. When he defected to Russia, he failed to take the oath renouncing his American citizenship, a simple act that would have irrevocably prevented his return. And when he did return, he hinted to officers of the FBI, the Soviet Embassy—and Marina herself—that he might want to go back to Russia. That was a major reason he refused to allow Marina to learn English or become too attached to American life. His restlessness can perhaps be traced to an incapacity to accept responsibility, for Marina, his children—or himself. He had expected the Soviet government to take care of him while he was in Russia, and he had expected the American government to pay for his journey home. In Texas, he had maneuvered the Russian émigrés into helping him, and now it was once again the government’s turn. His actions had a thread of consistency. Only days after he learned of Marina’s first pregnancy in Minsk, he had set in motion the machinery for their return to America. The day after he learned of her second pregnancy, in Dallas, he began to prepare for her return to Russia.
This time, however, it was different. A pregnant Marina, and June, were to go back to Russia alone. It fitted with Lee’s plan to kill Walker. On the day he ordered his revolver, January 27, he first hinted to Marina that he was thinking of sending her back to Russia—to get her used to the idea. And the week he seems to have decided that he would actually carry out the scheme, he took the initial steps for her return.
At first, Lee had probably assumed that a close-up assault on Walker would immediately result in his own death. Then it seems to have occurred to him that he might be captured alive. Killing Walker would be perceived by everyone as a political statement against “fascism” and the American right. From his prison cell, or in a trial, he could enunciate that statement, and the Soviet government would approve. He would ask for asylum in Russia. With Marina and his child already there, the American government might agree to expatriate him, and the Soviet government might agree to accept him. By sending Marina and June to Russia, then, he would be creating his own asylum in advance.
The plan was unrealistic—but it was Lee.
The week after Lee forced Marina to write to the Soviet Embassy was the most violent in all their married life. As his anxiety mounted, she was increasingly the object of his rages. He showed no concern for her pregnancy and treated her in a manner that reached the point of ferocity. One day he hit Marina so hard across the face that her nose started bleeding. The moment Lee saw blood, his arms fell motionless to his sides. “Oh my God. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean that.” He made Marina lie down. But his anger was not spent. He slammed the door and went out. He found the front and back doors locked when he came home. Quietly, he smashed a pane of glass in the kitchen door, then coolly reached in and unlocked it. He scooped up the pieces of glass and piled them neatly on top of the kitchen trash. He strode into the bedroom and, without a word to Marina, lay down on the bed with his back to her.