The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [115]
“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