"It sounds like the two of you got to know and like each other pretty well in the few days he was here."
"Yes. People can become good friends, or mortal enemies, in a lot less than six days."
"Indeed they can. Did you tell all this to the police?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"One thing didn't seem to have anything to do with the other. I answered their questions after they found Franz's canoe and traced it to here, but I didn't volunteer information. I saw no reason to tell the police anything unusual that might make it into the newspapers in addition to the stories that were already bound to appear. Michael had already had more than his share of bad publicity over that CIA defector thing-although I could never understand what all the fuss was about. I wish the whole damn Central Intelligence Agency would defect; the CIA and KGB deserve each other. With children starving and the planet virtually disintegrating under our feet, people still worry about the grown-up children who run our governments, and their children's games. I mean, who really gives a shit if a CIA agent defects to the Russians? The way this country has been run for the past forty years, the manner in which it's set its priorities, is enough to make you think the communists are really in charge, and constantly doing everything in their power to help us make fools of ourselves in the eyes of the world. Anyway, it seems Michael had come to share many of my views." She paused, perhaps again reacting to something she saw in my face. She bowed her head slightly, squinted at me over the tops of her bifocals. "You don't believe what I say about Michael, Mongo?"
I sipped at my coffee, which had gone cold. "Of course I believe you, Mary. I think Michael's change of heart had been coming on for a long time. I just never thought he would. ."
"Turn traitor?" Mary asked wryly.
"Quit the FBI. Did he tell you about his troubles with his boss?"
She shook her head. "Aside from what he told us in order to introduce himself, he didn't talk about the FBI. He just said his spying days were over."
"The head of the Bureau's counterintelligence unit is a man by the name of Edward J. Hendricks, who could be described as an unreconstructed cold warrior. He could care less about what's happened in Russia and Eastern Europe because he's a man who desperately needs his old, familiar enemies to give his life meaning. He's a man with a visceral hatred of communists-and of anybody he thinks sides with the communists. That covers a pretty broad spectrum of people."
"I'm familiar with the type," Mary said in the same wry tone.
"Oh, I'm sure you are. Hendricks fancies himself a super-patriot-but super-patriots of his sort would also have been, and were, super-patriots in Nazi Germany. He finds it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the country's critics and its enemies. Michael was probably pretty much like that in the early stages of his career; FBI recruits are chosen largely on the basis of ideology. As he told you, virtually all his assignments in the early part of his career involved surveillance of dissident groups, and there was a lot of illegal wiretapping and mail covers. Anyway, Michael mellowed, or got tired of it, whatever. He started arguing that the Bureau should stop wasting its time and manpower on peace groups, and should go after real spies as well as people in the violent right, like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. This new attitude of Michael's didn't sit well with Hendricks, and their relationship deteriorated further, to say the least, when Michael became a kind of ombudsman and whistle-blower inside the Bureau regarding matters of racial discrimination in the hiring and promotion of agents. Then Michael's surveillance team blew the CIA defector thing, and Hendricks got his first real shot at Michael. First, Michael was demoted, and then Hendricks ordered him out here to do a spy number on you people. Hendricks knew Michael would hate the assignment; it was his way of getting revenge for all the grief Michael had been giving him."
"You're saying this Hendricks doesn't really believe that the Community of Conciliation is-oh, how I love this word- 'subversive'?"
"Oh, he thinks you're subversive, all right, and he really does seem to believe that people like you pose a greater real danger to this country than the Klan or the neo-Nazis. He'd like to see just about every peace and civil rights activist in this country thrown out, or placed in some kind of internment camp, until, as he puts it, 'this thing with Russia is really over, and they're buried.'"
"Is he serious?"
"I've never met the man. Michael described the conversation to me, and Michael swears he was dead serious. But the point is that Hendricks has plenty of zealots under him who would have whistled 'The Star-Spangled Banner' all the time they were spying on you. Hendricks sent Michael here to humiliate him."
"Fools," Mary said tersely. "Damn fools."
"Did Michael tell you he hated being near water?"
She thought about it as she reached out for another bran muffin; she hesitated, then brought her hand back to her lap. "Yes," she said at last. "But he didn't put it that strongly. He said he didn't much care for water. I told him it was no problem, that he didn't have to stay in Cairn. We have chapters, stations, all over the world. I told him that if he really wanted to work for our cause we could send him to live on the top of a mountain, in the middle of a jungle-wherever he liked."
"Didn't it strike you as odd that a man who didn't like water would go out canoeing on the Hudson River at one of its widest points?"
"Not at the time, no," she replied distantly, her brows knitting into a frown. "People have changes of mood, sometimes do things they wouldn't normally do. . Mongo, do you think somebody killed Michael?"
"I haven't said that. I'm just trying to get a picture of what happened. I talked to the chief of police, and now I'm talking to you. Did Michael tell anyone he was going canoeing?"
"No," she answered in the same distant tone. "Not that I'm aware of. He didn't tell me."
"What about the man who owned the canoe? I think you said his name was Franz?"
"Franz Bauer."
"Did he ask Bauer's permission to use his canoe?"
Mary Tree slowly shook her head. "No."
"Building a canoe by hand must take a long time and cost some money. Each of those canoes I see down by the river would mean a lot to the man who made them."
"Yes. Franz made all of them."
"Do the people here normally take out any of the boats whenever they feel like it?"
Again, she shook her head. "The dinghies, yes, and the sailboat belongs to all of us. But not the canoes or the kayak; they're special."
"Did anybody see Michael go out in the canoe?"
"No. It had to have been in the evening, after dark, because all of the canoes were there when I went in to supper."
"Did Michael come to supper?"
"No." Now her brows were knitted even tighter, and tight lines of tension had appeared around her mouth as she thought back and remembered. "We all just assumed. ."
"You assumed what, Mary?"
"There was a full moon Sunday night, and the river was very still. It can be very lovely and soothing out on the river at night when it's like that. Michael had seemed very distracted and tense after coming back from talking with Harry."
"Harry?"
"Harry Peal."
"Harry Peal lives around here?"
"About ten miles north of here. He has a house on a cliff overlooking the river."
"Did Michael tell you what he and Harry Peal talked about, or why he went to see him in the first place?"
The corners of her mouth drew back in a thin smile. "I know why Michael went up there. Harry was another of the FBI's 'old friends,' Mongo. Michael had spied on Harry, too." She paused, and her smile, while still tinged with sadness, grew broader. "At least, with Harry, Michael had himself a real, honest-to-goodness communist to deal with. Ex-communist, anyway. Michael said he wanted to pay his respects to the man who'd spent two terms in prison, first for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and then for telling Joseph McCarthy-on live television-to go fuck himself. Harry was leaving that evening for Hungary to accept some award as part of President Shannon's cultural exchange program with the Russians and the Eastern Bloc countries. But he agreed to see Michael in the afternoon; if you knew Harry, you'd know what a hoot it was for him to have an FBI agent coming to visit him by the front door, as it were. Michael thought it was a real hoot, too. He was really high when he left here-but not so high when he got back. He was moody, distracted. He was in and out the rest of the day, and I know he went into town at least twice. I asked him if anything was wrong, and he said something. ."