“I do.”
“I have to hear you say it, Comrade.”
He took a big breath, and broke eye contact. He knew he was leaving shore, sailing off again on uncharted waters to what he hoped would be his destiny.
“I will this time succeed. I will shoot and kill General Edwin Walker, for crimes against peace and the revolution. I can do it. I can be the assassin. There won’t be any mistakes.”
“No, there won’t be any mistakes. Because this time I have drawn up a plan, an approach route, an escape route. We will time things to the second, we will measure the distance, we will know that there are no impediments to shooting. Our intelligence will be sound, our preparations thorough. We will do this professionally.”
“Yes sir.”
“Now, tell me, Alek, why is it we’re doing this?”
“What? Why? Because you asked me.”
“Forget that part. I mean politically, strategically, morally, what is the purpose? This is murder we’re talking here. It’s not to be done lightly, on a whim, or for shabby psychological needs.”
“He’s a bad man. He needs to die. That’s all.”
“And that’s enough for you?”
“It is. It isn’t for you?”
“Not for authorization. In my memo to authority, I argued that General Walker applied rightist pressure to President Kennedy, and Kennedy wasn’t politically able to stand up to it after failures at the Bay of Pigs, Vienna, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“I thought America won that. I was angry.”
“Propaganda. Khrushchev traded him Russian missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Turkey. We won, as our missiles were far less valuable than yours. Kennedy knows this and is spoiling for a fight, and General Walker is shoving him into it. Wherever he chooses to fight, it will be a mistake. Possibly the Republic of South Vietnam, possibly Cuba, possibly somewhere in South America, perhaps even Europe. Walker’s popularity squeezes Kennedy, and something tragic for both our peoples happens, because of Walker’s insanity and Kennedy’s weakness. So we take Walker out of the equation. By taking one life, perhaps we save many.”
“I agree, I agree,” said Alek, his face lit with inner zeal. Again I thought I saw a tear.
Why did I do this? It is odd. I’m not sure I know. Alek was an easy mark; I could have gotten him to wear ladies’ clothes in Times Square, shouting “Long live Russia,” if I had wanted to. I think I was arguing with myself and using him as a surrogate. I wanted to hear the arguments said out loud, and I thought in some way, I might speak from my subconscious and say something more honest than I intended. I might learn something of my own true motives, as opposed to the policy mumbo jumbo by which I justified the killing, knowing that policy is malleable and that it could be used to justify anything. I suppose I was also preparing for upcoming seductions, knowing I would have to convince the man who would act as backup shooter to do so, and he was far smarter than Alek and might have come up with unexpected counterarguments.
In another sense, I felt I owed it to him. He was the expendable one, the sacrifice. If it happened, he would be left to burn to death in the Texas electric chair, screaming of red agents who’d given him orders straight from SMERSH. I doubted if the officials who executed him could keep a straight face during the operation. I wanted to give him at least an idea of where it fit in in the grand scheme of things and the belief that he had somehow made a contribution. It might help get him through the long night before they turned the switch.
“In a few days, I will contact you again. At that meeting I will present you with a plan and a map. I want you prepared; do not get in any arguments, do not read any papers, do not trouble your mind with new information. I want your mind unagitated. Since you’re a fighter and a yapper, I know that’s hard for you, but do your best for me. I want you ready to read and commit to memory, do you see? You have to concentrate for me, because you cannot possess the plan on paper. If things should go wrong, you cannot be found with a plan written in Russian. It would cause problems. Security, do you see?”
“I do. But what should I do if I’m caught?”
“You won’t be caught.”
“I know, but plans can backfire. It could happen.”
“Then be patient. Say nothing. We will get you out somehow. Possibly a prisoner trade, possibly a breakout, I don’t know. We always get our people back, that’s our reputation. If it goes sour and you keep the faith, we’ll spring you, and you’ll spend your life in Havana as a valued citizen who sacrificed for the Revolution. We’ll even work out a way for Marina and Junie and the new child to come to you.”
“I knew I could count on you, Comrade,” he said.
“Okay, now go. I will get you the plan, you will memorize it. You have the ammunition; do you have the rifle?”
“It’s with Marina in Fort Worth. She doesn’t know I still have it. I can get it anytime.”
“Excellent. Leave it there for the time being; concentrate on concentrating. In all likelihood, you will do this thing, get away with it, and in months to come, possibly we will find other wet tasks for you to do. You will help the Revolution. This is what you want, correct?”
“I will show you.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out an envelope that he had been careful not to fold. He pulled a photograph out of it. “See,” he said, “this is who I really am.”
I pulled to the side of the road and turned on the light in the car. The photo later became world-famous when it appeared on the cover of Life magazine and a thousand crazed conspiracy books. You’ve seen it. Alek in black, holding his rifle across his body, his pistol tucked into his belt, and in his other hand copies of the Daily Worker and the Trotskyist International – he had no idea that these two organs, like the parties they represented, were in blood opposition to each other – staring forthrightly at the camera lens in poor Marina’s hand, wearing that eternal smirk of the sucker who thinks he’s figured the game as the game is figuring him. I could see that it was a kind of romantic image of the red guerrilla that animated his deepest fantasies, like something out of the 1910s, an assassin, a bomber with a bowling-ball explosive and a long, sparkling fuse, a Gavrilo Princip, a figure out of Conrad. I felt sorry for a man who could be so deluded even as I said, “Yes, Alek. That is it. That’s the spirit we need!”
I spent the next few days holed up, working on The Plan. I went back to the operational zone a couple of times, I took public transportation to and from, I walked the distances, I charted the police activity, I noted the mileages to the police stations, I had margaritas at the Patio so I could determine whether Alek’s movement on the roof or my shooter in the car where I would place him would be particularly visible. I even climbed up on the roof in old blue jeans and boat shoes, Yale poof playing Jedburgh commando! I got a good look at Alek’s shooting position and tried to imagine his actions.
I knew certain things. First, that the immediate result of the shot would be a frozen moment of fear followed by absolute chaos. As I saw it, my shooter would have the general zeroed and be well prepared for Alek’s shot. If Alek missed, he would fire a silenced shot (I took on faith that Lon would solve all problems), finishing the issue. But witnesses would remember it differently; some would say there came a shot and the general’s head exploded, and others would say there was a shot and the general’s head exploded a full second later. What if Alek missed and the bullet was recovered? That would be dicey, yes, but it would be so confusing to everybody that no one would get it. There would be – assuming Lon had worked it out – no record of a second bullet existing. Since the Patio was brick, the building behind it stone, there was a good chance that a miss by Alek would shatter on a hard surface. In any event, the worst-case scenario seemed to amount to confusion, conflicting theories, an eternal mystery, a suspicion that there was more to know – but nothing substantial leading to our plot, except a theoretically captured Alek’s crazed insistence that the reds had made him do it.