The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [29]
2
They met again after dark in Patchen’s living room. The narrow row house still bore traces of Patchen’s wife: a dying plant, chintz furniture. There were no photographs, no letters lying around, no odor of food and soap. The signs that anyone had ever made love in Patchen’s house were disappearing.
Dennis Foley sat on the sofa with his long legs stretched before him. Grief had made him listless. The mannerisms Christopher had noticed in Paris were gone. Foley dressed as carefully as before, and he still wore the PT-109 clasp on his black knitted tie, but he had the look of a man who has been told that he has lost his health or his wife. What he had thought himself to be was in the past.
“You’ve met, I think,” Patchen said.
Foley looked at Christopher without interest. “I haven’t been briefed,” he said. “Your people called to say you had something for the White House and we ought to take you seriously. Go ahead.”
Christopher glanced at Patchen. “Who’s been told?” he asked.
“The Director. He decided that the White House had to be brought in at once. No one else will be told without presidential authority.”
“I can give you twenty minutes,” Foley said.
Christopher remained standing. “I’ll have to give it to you cold, Mr. Foley,” he said. “It has to do with the assassination of President Kennedy.”
Foley gritted his teeth and started to get up. “Take him to Earl Warren’s people,” he said. “That’s the proper channel.”
“It’s too sensitive for that,” Patchen said. “I know this is painful, but I think you should listen. You can reject what Christopher has to say after you’ve heard it, and you won’t hear from him again.”
Foley relaxed his grip on the arms of the chair. “All right,” he said.
He stared at the floor as Christopher began to speak. After hearing the first sentence, his eyes snapped upward and fastened on Christopher’s face. Christopher actually saw the pupils dilate, so that Foley’s pale eyes changed color and darkened, as if his brain had commanded them to stop admitting light. Foley wore such an expression of pain that Christopher wanted to look away. It took Christopher, trained to report in clean sentences, very little time to summarize what he believed.
Foley went on staring into Christopher’s eyes, but when he spoke, he spoke to Patchen. “It’s insane,” he said.
“No,” Patchen replied. “It’s logical.”
“It’s grotesque,” Foley said; his voice had lost timbre, and he put a hand to his neck and cleared his throat. He began to cough, and in the midst of the spasm lit a cigar.
“It’s grotesque,” he repeated. “John Fitzgerald Kennedy and these people do not belong in the same order of nature.”
“Nevertheless,” Christopher said, “the possibility is there.”
“How is it there—even the possibility?” Foley asked hotly. “How did they do it, how did they organize it? Give me the scenario.”
“These things are less difficult than you think,” Christopher said. “Tradecraft is a simple art.”
“What is a simple art?” Foley asked.
“Tradecraft,” Patchen explained. “It’s jargon for the technique and practice of espionage. Go on, Paul.”
“This is all speculation, Foley, and I like speculation even less than you seem to,” Christopher said. “Bear with me for a minute.”
“All right,” Foley said.
“They needed an opportunity, and they knew it would come. American Presidents show themselves in public under security arrangements that are the laughingstock of the world. In addition to opportunity, they needed an assassin.”
“So they reached into Dallas and picked out a psychotic like Oswald?” Foley said, his voice rising. “Come off it, Christopher.”
“If I’m right, yes—they reached into Dallas and picked out Oswald,” Christopher said. “His psychosis was the handle they had on him.”
“Psychotics can’t be trusted to function,” Foley said, and Christopher, without surprise, again felt