“I want to help him, Rosie,” Amjac said slowly, “but somebody else has to decide that, so I’ll let you know tomorrow. Good night and good luck.”
“Night, Lou. My best to your mother when she calls later.”
Amjac closed the door behind him.
“You don’t just fool around, do you, Eugénie Rose?” Marco asked reverently.
Amjac was one of the four men in the large room in the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation toward noon the next morning. Another man was a courier who had just come in from Washington. The fourth man was Marco.
The courier had brought one hundred and sixty-eight close-up photographs from one of the Bureau’s special files. The close-ups included shots of male models, Mexican circus performers, Czech research chemists, Indiana oil men, Canadian athletes, Australian outdoor showmen, Japanese criminals, Austrian miners, French head waiters, Turkish wrestlers, pastoral psychiatrists, marine lawyers, English publishers, and various officials of the U.S.S.R., the People’s Republic of China, and the Soviet Army. Some shots were sharp, some were murky. Marco made Mikhail Gomel and Giorgi Berezovo the first time through. No one spoke. The second time through he made Pa Cha, the older Chinese dignitary. He pulled no stiffs, such as North Carolinian literary agents or Basque sheep brokers, because he had done so much studying so well through five years of nights.
The courier and the special agent took the three photographs which Marco had chosen and left the room with them to check their classifications against information on file. Marco and Amjac were left in the room.
“You go ahead,” Marco said to Amjac. “You must have plenty to do. I’ll wait.”
“Ah, shut up,” Amjac suggested.
Marco sat down at the long polished table, unfolded The New York Times and was able to complete two-thirds of the crossword puzzle before the special agent and the courier returned.
“What else do you remember about these men?” the special agent asked right off, before sitting down, which caused Amjac to sit up much straighter and appear as though a dull plastic film had been peeled off his eyes. The courier slid the three photographs, faceup, across the table to Marco. “Take your time,” the special agent said.
Marco didn’t need extra time. He picked up the top photograph, which was Gomel’s. “This one wears stainless-steel false teeth and he smells like a goat. His voice is loud and it grates. He’s about five feet six, I’d figure. Heavy. He wears civilian clothes but his staff is uniformed, ranging from a full colonel to a first lieutenant. They wear political markings.” Marco picked up the shot of the Chinese civilian, Pa Cha. “This one has a comical, high-pitched giggle and killer’s eyes. He had the authority. Made no attempt to conceal his distaste and contempt for the Russians. They deferred to him.” He picked up Berezovo’s picture, a shot that had been taken while the man was in silk pajamas with a glass in his hand and a big, silly grin across his face. “This is the lieutenant general. The staff he carried was in civilian clothes and one of the staff was a woman.” Marco grinned. “They looked like FBI men. He speaks with a bilateral emission lisp and has a very high color like—uh—like Mr. Amjac here.”
A new man came into the room with a note for the special agent who read it and said, “Your friend Mr. Melvin has been cooperating with us in Wainwright, Alaska. He’s made one of these men, Mikhail Gomel, who is a member of the Central Committee.” Marco beamed at Amjac over this development, but Amjac wouldn’t look at him.
“Can you return to Washington today, Colonel? We’ll have a crew of specialists waiting for you.”
“Any time you say, sir. I’m on indefinite leave. But the rank is major.”
“You have been a full colonel since sunrise this morning. They just told me on the phone from Washington.”
“No!” Marco yelled. He leaped to his feet and gripped the table and kept shouting, “No, no, no!” He pounded and pounded on the shining table with rage and frustration. “That filthy, filthy, filthy son-of-a-bitch. He’ll pay us for this! He’ll pay us someday for this! No, no, no!”
Potentially, Marco might have been a hysteroid personality.
Colonel Marco worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and his own unit of Army Intelligence (into which he had been honorably and instantly reinstated upon the recommendation of the FBI’s director and the Plans Board of the Central Intelligence Agency). There was no longer any question of a need for a court-martial to institute a full investigation. A full unit was set up, with headquarters in New York and conference space at the Pentagon, and unaccountable funds from the White House were provided to maintain housing, laboratories, and personnel, including three psychiatrists, the country’s leading Pavlovian practitioner, six espionage technicians (including three librarians), a mnemonicist, an Orientalist, and an expert on Soviet internal affairs. The rest were cops and assistant cops.
Marco was in charge. His aide, assistant, and constant companion was Louis Amjac. The other side-kick was a round type, with the nerves of a Chicago bellhop, named Jim Lehner. He was there representing the CIA. They worked out of a capacious, many chambered house in the Turtle Bay district of New York, right through the summer of 1959 but they did not get one step further than the alarming conclusions which had been reached originally by Marco. It is questionable whether any definitive conclusions beyond those reached could have been attained if Marco had been able to allow himself to tell the part of his dreams having to do with Raymond’s murders, but he could see no connection, he didn’t think the time had come, he couldn’t keep the thought in his mind, and so on and on into many splinters of reasons why he did not divulge the information. Thousands of man-hours were put in on the project and as time went on the pressure from exalted sources grew and grew. A three-platoon system of surveillance was put around Raymond. The total cost of the project which the doctrinaire romantics in the service classified as Operation Enigma has been estimated at, or in excess of, $634,217 and some change, for travel, salaries, equipment, lease, and leasehold improvements, maintenance and miscellaneous expense—and not a quarter of it was stolen beyond a few hundred rolls of Tri-X and Hydropan film, but even accountants don’t recognize such losses because all photographers everywhere are helpless about film stocks to the point where it is not even considered stealing but is called testing.
The Army flew Alan Melvin, the former corporal turned civilian plumber, from Alaska to the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, then to the house in Turtle Bay in New York, but the interviews with him revealed no more than what had been gleaned from Marco. However, the call to Operation Enigma seemed to have come in time to have saved Melvin’s sanity—even his life. The nightmares had caused a weight loss of seventy-one pounds. He weighed one hundred and three pounds when picked up at Wainwright. He could not be moved for seventeen days, while he received high-caloric feeding, but by that time he had talked to Marco. When he learned that what he had dreamed had reached such a point of credibility that it had become one more terrible anxiety for the President of the United States, it seemed as though all dread was removed instantly, enabling Melvin to sleep and eat, dissolving the concretion of his fears.
Upon his restoration to active duty Colonel Marco requested, and was granted, an informal meeting with representative officers of the Board. They explained that it would not be possible for Colonel Marco to refuse advancement to the rank he held but that it was to his great credit that he felt so strongly about the matter. They explained that such an action could disturb legislative relationships in the present climate, so extraordinary that it had to be considered the far, far better part of valor for government establishments to run with the tide. Colonel Marco asked that he be permitted to register his vociferous distaste for Senator Iselin and be allowed to demonstrate that he rejected any and all implied sponsorship of himself by such an infamous source; he wished the condition to be viewed by the Board as being and having been untenable to him as well as having been unsolicited by him and undesirable in every and any way. He added other stern officialese. He asked that he be allowed to express, in an official manner, his innermost fears that this promotion to the rank of full colonel would inconsiderately prejudice the future against his favor for an optimum Army career.