The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [116]
“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?”
Rolling his glass between his palms, Trumbull nodded slowly, as if agreeing with whatever thought was passing through his own head.
“Well,” Trumbull said. “What we seem to have here is a pretty good case against all the people Paul has put the finger on. We’ve got two men who believe it in this room—am I right, David? You buy what Paul’s told us?”
“There’s no choice,” Patchen said. “It’s not just this reporting. There’s collateral intelligence in our hands that confirms almost everything he’s told us. With a little more work we can remove every shadow of a doubt. Every shadow.”
“Okay,” Trumbull said. “That’s you and Paul. I respect your judgment, David, and your work, Paul. Then there’s Dennis, here—I take it he doesn’t believe it, and he won’t believe it.”
Foley said, “That is correct.”
“Then there’s me,” Trumbull said. “I guess I make the decision. Do we trot this in to the President? He’s the man. The rest of us are just his lookouts.”
Trumbull collected the scattered pages and photographs and put them back in order.
“If I show this to the President, what’ll he do?” he asked. “He can go on TV and hand the American people another brutal, horrible shock, or he can read it and keep it secret and worry about it for the rest of his Presidency. The country has got to come together after this tragedy down in Dallas. Got to. We’ve got something to do in Vietnam, and we’ve got to do it. We can’t do it without public understanding and support for our policy. Wouldn’t you agree, Dennis—David?”
Foley nodded. Patchen, as usual, gave back no indication of his thoughts.
“I’ll tell you a plain fact,” Trumbull said. “If the American people believed that a bunch of Vietnamese got together and killed John F. Kennedy, they’d want to go