The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [21]
“How’s he like the watch business?” Christopher asked.
“Okay, I guess. It pays for the girls. He takes pictures of them—he’s a white-socks fetishist. Tell him you’re a friend of Major Johnson. Old Dieter Dimpel. If you want to use a recognition code, give him the number of his party card, and Hitler’s —555. He’ll reply with the date of his arrest, June 4, 1943.”
Hitchcock listened happily to Christopher’s laughter. “I mean it,” he said, “look Dieter up. He’s useful.” Telling the story had made him feel better; despite all he had had to drink, he was alert and smiling.
He drove Christopher to the airport. They shook hands in the dark interior of the car. “I’d go in with you for a farewell drink, but Theresa worries at night,” Hitchcock said. “Christ how they change—had you noticed that, Paul?”
7
November is a rainy month on the Congolese coast, and Christopher was soaked when he entered the airport building after struggling through the crowd of porters between the curb and the entrance. In the ticket line an Englishman was having a violent argument with the airlines clerk, a laughing Congolese who told him that he had no record of his reservation.
“You’ll bloody well hear about this!” the Englishman said. “I’m a first-class passenger to London, and the booking was made a month ago.”
The Congolese waved his hand in the Englishman’s face. “Go away, go away—you have no reservation.”
Christopher slid his bag onto the scale and handed the clerk his ticket. The clerk removed the five-hundred-franc note from the ticket, put it in his breast pocket with the rest of his bribes, stamped Christopher’s boarding pass, and tagged his baggage.
“How much delay in the flight?” Christopher asked.
“That airplane will never be late!” said the clerk with another laugh.
Christopher took his passport out of his pocket, marked the page on which his visa was stamped with his boarding pass, and walked toward the passport control. A young Belgian priest carrying a transistor radio stepped in front of him. He tapped Christopher’s green passport with his finger.
“You’re an American?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Your President has been shot.”
“What?”
“President Kennedy—he’s dead. Listen.”
He turned up his radio. A Frenchman’s voice on Radio Léopoldville was reading the news from Dallas. It was nine o’clock in the Congo, two o’clock in Dallas. The news was still a simple bulletin.
Christopher went back to the ticket counter and lifted the clerk’s telephone. He dialed the American embassy. The duty officer did not say hello. He picked up the phone and said, “Yes, it’s true. President Kennedy has been assassinated. The vice-president is safe. The President is dead. We have no details. Please hang up now.” Christopher hung up the phone, nodded to the startled clerk, and walked toward the passport control.
Christopher never forgot anything. The tone of his mother’s voice, the smell of a leper in Addis Ababa, the telephone number of the embassy in Kabul, the looks of a man killed by a car in Berlin as he crossed the street to meet him moved constantly through his mind. Now he thought of nothing. He went to the windows and looked out through the rain at the glistening jets drawn up on the tarmac. He felt a hand on his arm; the priest was beside him again.
“There’s nothing more on the radio,” the priest said. “They’re playing music. Do you go to Brussels?”
“No, Rome.”
“You’re crying. Would you like to pray with me?”
“No, Father. I don’t believe.”
“It’s a frightful thing.”
Christopher thought the priest was talking about his rejection of faith. “For some,” he said.
“For all. President Kennedy was a great man. That death should come like that to him—he was like a young prince.”
“Yes, it’s a great shock.