“At the instigation of an agent of Ruiz’s in New Orleans, Oswald went to Mexico City, leaving New Orleans on September 25 by bus. He arrived in Mexico City at ten in the morning on September 27 and registered at the Hotel Comercio, as the Cubans had instructed him to do. That day he went twice to the Cuban embassy and once to the Soviet embassy to apply for visas. He was refused in both places. Ruiz picked him up on that day and kept him under surveillance. When Ruiz was certain that Oswald was clean-that there was no U.S. interest in him and no American surveillance, he contacted him by phone, using a coded recognition signal.
“David tells me there are three dead days in Oswald’s stay in Mexico City. The official investigation has not turned up anything on Oswald’s activities between September 27 and October 1, when Oswald left Mexico City by bus.
“Ruiz talked to Oswald on September 30, in the park called the Alameda. You have Oswald’s reaction in the report. He took Ruiz’s bait. When Oswald walked out of the Alameda, he was activated, and President Kennedy was a dead man.
“Ruiz went on to the Congo. Oswald went back to Dallas.”
Dennis Foley left his place by the window. Christopher saw through the window that two White House Cadillacs were drawn up at the curb; the chauffeurs stood smoking on the brick sidewalk. The meeting was taking more time than Foley and Trumbull had expected. Foley, at the bar, poured neat scotch into his glass. His harsh blue eyes were fastened on Christopher’s face.
“The killing of Oswald seems to have been unrelated to the Vietnamese,” Christopher said. “There was unbearable heat on the Soviets. Oswald, after all, had been a defector to the USSR. The Russian service believes in direct, drastic action. The KGB had Frankie Pigeon in cold storage. They used Pigeon, and Pigeon used Ruby, to take the heat off. Pigeon earned a million dollars with one phone call.
“Ruby was a kind of fringe figure, more a hustler than a hoodlum, according to Pigeon. He’d always wanted to be on the inside with the syndicate, if that’s what it’s called in real life. Pigeon just told him to make a hit for the syndicate, and Ruby jumped at the chance. Pigeon says Ruby used to hang around the edge of the mob in Chicago and was always trying to keep in touch after he moved to Dallas. The syndicate never wanted any part of him. And it still knows nothing about the way Pigeon used Ruby to kill Oswald. Pigeon’s terrified that they’ll find out. They’d kill him. He broke discipline. He did it on his own, for the money.
“Frankie Pigeon scoffs at Ruby now for being a romantic about Kennedy, but I think Pigeon regarded killing Oswald as a patriotic act, just as much as Ruby did. Pigeon had no fear that Ruby would talk: he’d want to prove to the syndicate that he could observe omertà. as well as any Sicilian. Once Oswald was dead, everything calmed down for the Soviets in twenty-four hours-literally. From their point of view, it was a sensible operation, and cheap at the price.”
3
Trumbull sighed. “I swear I never heard anything like that,” he said. “Men killing Presidents of the United States, and other men killing the assassin, and nobody knowing who they were working for or why. That part doesn’t make sense at all.”
“It makes every kind of sense,” Patchen said. “That’s the way it’s done. I can show you files on a dozen other cases. The pattern is classic. In other circumstances I’d say it was admirable.” He turned to Christopher.“One thing about the operation against Oswald. Are you sure about the counterfeit money?”
“Yes,” Christopher said. “That’s what the bank records show. Klimenko carried ten thousand hundred-dollar bills to Zurich. Fifty of the bills were counterfeit. They have the serial numbers of the money manufactured by the SS during the war. The KGB just passed the fake money on to Pigeon. Dolder und Co. caught it right away. Of course they informed the Swiss police. I don’t understand it. Maybe the Russians didn’t check all the serial numbers; maybe they just gathered up all the hundred-dollar bills lying around in their safes. You know how sloppy things can get on an emergency operation. They had no reason to plant the counterfeits on Pigeon, unless they’ve got some idea of blackmailing him with the syndicate. That’s too complicated, even for them.”
Foley returned to his chair with a fresh drink in his hand. Liquor and anger had colored his face. He sat down beside Trumbull and stared for a moment into the empty air. When he began to speak, he used the abrupt sentences Christopher remembered from their first meeting in Paris.
“J.D. asked you to tell us about your methods, but I didn’t hear any mention of those,” he said. “Suppose you tell us how you came by all this data.”
“By spending money, mostly,” Christopher said.
“Oh. You mean you’ve been zipping around the world like Sam Spade, bribing hotel clerks?”
“I paused to bury one of my agents, Foley.”
Foley bent his long torso, leaning across the coffee table so that his face was close to Christopher’s.
“Let me recapitulate,” he said. “One of your agents, this Luong, was killed in Saigon. What was the death toll from the bomb in the car-five, six? Then you killed the two Vietnamese kids you call assassins. In Zurich you broke into a bank, using an unreconstructed Nazi as a burglar. In Italy you caused two American citizens to be shot, though not, by your account, killed. You kidnapped and tortured another American citizen. You left four Cubans dead and another wounded in the Congo. For a moralizer, you’re quite a fellow.”
Foley opened the file containing Christopher’s report and spilled the photographs over the table. He arranged the pictures of the dead Vietnamese gunmen and those showing Frankie Pigeon, bound and naked, in the interrogation room.
“You expect us to put value on information obtained by these methods?” he asked. “You expect us to believe in someone named Manuel Ruiz, hidden in the jungle, and to believe he’d simply tell you what you say he’s told you?”
Foley, as he finished speaking, became aware of Patchen, who did not so much move as change the tension of his muscles.
“Paul, don’t answer,” Patchen said. “Foley, let me say this to you: first of all, Christopher didn’t kill his own agent; he has a reputation amounting to an office joke for keeping agents alive. Second, he didn’t put two pounds of plastique in his own car. Third, he didn’t expect to cause the deaths of those two Vietnamese gunmen. He wanted to talk to them, for reasons I think you understand very clearly-reasons he was honorable enough not to spell out in a report that may yet go to the President. I have no such scruples.”
“David, I’m not talking to you,” Foley said.
“Oh yes you are,” Patchen said. There was no more resonance than usual in his flat voice, but Trumbull threw Foley a glance and held up his palm. “Go on, David,” he said.
“Christopher’s methods are justified by their results,” Patchen said. “That’s the rule. That’s always been the rule. Christopher’s been given promotions and medals by his government for playing by that rule better than almost anyone else has ever done. You haven’t lived his life. You can’t imagine it, much less understand it.”
“All right, David,” Trumbull said.
Patchen slowed his speech, but went on. “There’s a tape recording of the conversation with Manuel Ruiz, and a living witness to Christopher’s presence in the Congo,” he said. “Christopher left Ruiz alive, and Pigeon too, when it would have been easy to let them be killed. We can lay hands on both of them whenever we’re instructed to do so. Pigeon still has the counterfeit money, and the Swiss police know the serial numbers. We know the movements of Manuel Ruiz, and of Do and his daughter. The evidence is incontrovertible. Christopher has given you the truth. You don’t like it, Foley. You never have. You think he has some motive to soil Kennedy’s memory. The question is, will you ever learn?”