The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [30]
“I’d say he functioned very well,” Christopher said. “You don’t have to be sane to pull a trigger. You tell an agent who is obsessed with something, as Oswald was obsessed with his own impotence and the power of others, something that will inspire him to act out of the logic of his insanity.”
“And what did they tell Oswald?”
“I don’t know yet. I would have told him that I was a Soviet intelligence officer, and that we’d been watching him benevolently for years, here and when he was in Russia, knowing that he was capable of a great act that would change history. That would have fitted in with his fantasy.”
Foley looked at his watch. “Half my time is gone,” he said wearily. “Why does it have to be a conspiracy? Why can’t Oswald have just done it for his own insane reasons?”
“One thing, and again it’s speculation, but it fits in with the theory because it fits in with standard clandestine practice,” Christopher said. “Oswald killed the President with a rifle. That’s the tool of an agent, not the weapon of a lunatic. Every other President who has been killed or wounded by an assassin has been killed or wounded by a pistol—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley. Both Roosevelts were attacked with pistols. Gandhi was killed with a pistol. Nuts like to smell their victims. Oswald used a rifle, and he left it behind like a professional and walked away. If he’d been a real professional, instead of something designed for one-time use, he would have got away.”
Christopher was still standing. He had taken care to speak in a calm voice. He looked down at Foley, who had closed his eyes again; he was massaging the bridge of his nose to advertise his fatigue.
“I’d like to talk to you, Patchen,” Foley said.
He said nothing more to Christopher and did not look at him again.
3
Patchen walked Christopher to the door. Foley was still sprawled in the chair with his hand to his face when Patchen returned.
“Get me a glass of water,” he said.
When Patchen handed him the glass, Foley put it on the table beside him and opened his eyes; his pupils were still dark, as if bruised.
“How well do you know this Christopher?” Foley asked.
“We’ve known each other for twenty years,” Patchen said. “We came into the outfit on the same day. I’ve backstopped his operations for more than ten years.”
“Then you can’t be very objective.”
“You can check my assessment of Christopher with anyone else who knows his work,” Patchen said. “Three things: first, he’s intelligent and entirely unsentimental. Second, he will go to any lengths to get at the truth, he never gives up. Third, he is not subject to fear.”
“Everyone is subject to fear.”
“No. He’ll walk into anything.”
“Then he’s crazy,” Foley said.
“In that respect, maybe. But it makes him very valuable.”
“This theory of his is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese—you know that, don’t you?”
“I thought enough of it to bring you over here to listen to it,” Patchen said. “The theory, as a theory with no hard facts to support it, is sound enough.”
“Is it? In what way, exactly?”
“He’s right about two things. They had a motive, and they had the skill and the experience to bring off an operation of this kind.”
Foley leaped to his feet. Standing over Patchen, he pointed a finger at his face. “Let’s get this straight once and for all,” he said. “They had no goddamn motive. None.”
Patchen’s unblinking eyes did not change expression. “We both know they did, Dennis,” he said.
Foley’s face was closed and angry. Patchen knew why; he understood that Foley, who had defended the living President with all the power of his mind, did not regard loyalty as something that stopped with death. Foley had stood next to the President of the United States, believing that everyone ought to love him as Foley did. He wanted to believe that only a madman would kill such a man as Kennedy had been; he wanted the world to believe it.
“I won’t have any son of a bitch saying that what happened to Jack in Dallas was a punishment,” Foley said. He breathed deeply. “I want this matter