In fact there was nothing new in the file. The same old rumors and suspicions. They are down there in the pale sands in their padded jackets, gathered in one great silent sweep, waiting for the word. It didn’t need elaboration or update. There was something classic in the massing of the Chinese.
He wanted to believe it was true. He did believe it was true. But he also knew it wasn’t. Ferrie told him it didn’t matter, true or not. The thing that mattered was the rapture of the fear of believing. It confirmed everything. It justified everything. Every violence and lie, every time he’d cheated on his wife. It allowed him to collapse inside, to melt toward awe and dread. That’s what Ferrie said. It explained his dreams. The Chinese caused his dreams. Every terror and queerness of sleep, every unspeakability—it is painted in China-white.
Men floating down in white silk. He liked to think of an unmechanized mass, silent men gathering their chutes, concealed in the pale sands. This was not the.missiles or the satellites, all that cocksure technology. The Chinese file contained the human swarm, in padded jackets, massing near the border. A fear to savor slowly.
The door opened and Ferrie walked in, breaking the reverie. He leaned against a wall eating french fries from a carton.
“I came to give a report. Not that you want to hear it.”
“Where’s Oswald?”
“Houston by now. I had Frank and Raymo take him. He’ll get on a bus for Mexico City.”
“Mackey says he can fix it so the Cubans won’t take him. He’s got Agency connections in Mexico City. Agency’s bound to have someone inside the Cuban embassy. We’re counting on Leon going back to Texas. We know that station wagon parked outside his house had Texas plates. His wife and kid left in that car.”
“I’m pretty sure his rifle went with them.”
“Is he leaning our way?” Banister said.
“This is the part you don’t want to hear.”
“He says no.”
“That’s right. But there’s time.”
“Does he know who we want?”
“He knows.”
“Not interested.”
“It needs time. He’s been carrying on a struggle inside.”
“He’s your project, Dave.”
“We had a talk this morning. To the extent that he talks. He hasn’t made the leap.”
“You keep saying you’ll get inside his mind.”
“I’m in his mind. I’m there. Like a fucking car wash.”
“He shot at Walker.”
“That’s the point. Walker was politics. But Leon can’t get worked up over Kennedy. He figures the man has made amends for past errors. He’s a little dazzled by the Kennedy magic.”
Banister wanted to crush something.
“Leon’s a type he is willing to relinquish control at some point down the line,” Ferrie said. “It just hasn’t happened yet. Where’s Mackey?”
“Miami. He’s got two houses set up. One for Alpha people. One for his own team.”
“If Leon is in?”
“If Leon is in,” Banister said, “you fly him to Miami the night before.”
“Then what?”
“We have to work it out.”
“Once it’s done I want him out of there,” Ferrie said. “I don’t want him abandoned or killed. He leaves his rifle behind and he gets out like the rest of them.”
“That’s always a possibility,” Banister said.
Ferrie tossed the empty carton toward a basket.
“Do you trust Alpha 66?” he said.
“What the hell. They’ve been running a high fever ever since Pigs. That’s two and a half years with a thermometer up their ass. They’re ready. Nobody doubts their readiness.”
“Do you trust Mackey?”
“I trust him completely,” Banister said. “He wants a wall of shooters. Maybe eight men elevated on both sides of the street. As many as ten men. A shooting gallery.”
“I thought Mackey liked a hand-knit operation.”
“That’s what he likes. This is what he gets. Alpha is in whether we want them or not. Best to join forces. He’ll make the most of it. Once the motorcade route is public, he’ll scout the area and set up positions. The hero comes riding into town. Tra-la, tra-la. We get him first crack out of the box.”
They went down the stairs and paused outside the building entrance.
Banister said, “We have one more thing working. We want to leave an imprint of Oswald’s activities starting today and ending when the operation is complete. A series of incidents. We want to establish Oswald as a man that people will later remember. Someone involved in suspicious business.”
“What if Oswald doesn’t cooperate?”
“We create our own Oswald. A second, a third, a fourth. This plan goes into effect no matter what he does after Mexico City. Mackey wants Oswalds all over Texas. He wants Alpha to supply the people. I talked to Carmine Latta about money for this thing.”
“I’m the one who talks to Carmine.”
“Not this time.”
“I’m the contact.”
“Shut up so I can tell you.”
“Carmine and I have a rapport.”
“There’s an Alpha chapter in Dallas with headquarters in some rundown house. Carmine sent his bodyguard to Dallas earlier today. Pockets hot with cash.”
In Mexico City
Postcard #6. Mexico City. Ancient and modern. Sprawling yet intimate. A city of contrasts. Leon stands in his room at the Hotel del Comercio, counting out his pesos. He has a street map with the day’s destinations clearly marked. He has his documents and clippings. He has his thirty-five-cent Spanish-English dictionary with the kangaroo emblem. (New, concise. Nuevo, conciso.) He enjoys foreign travel, just like the President.
He walks two miles from his hotel to the Cuban embassy. He tells the woman he is going to Russia and wants to stop off in Cuba for a while. It is easier to get a transit visa because of the Cuban wariness of Americans. And anyone on his way to Russia gets the benefit of the doubt.
The woman examines his old Soviet work permit, his proof of marriage to a Soviet citizen, his proof of leadership in the Fair Play for Cuba movement, the news story of his arrest and a number of other documents.
She does not say
sí.
She does not say
no.
She sends him off to get photographs for the visa application. He stops in at the Soviet embassy, a couple of blocks away. The nearness is reassuring. The embassy is a large gray villa with a columned entrance and fancy dormers. There are armed sentries and a tall iron fence with a spiky top. It occurs to Leon that a concealed camera is probably taking his picture as he enters.
An official looks at his papers. It might be nice, he says, if Leon could come back with his Cuban transit visa in hand.
All right. He gets his picture taken and goes back to the Cuban embassy. The woman says he must get his Soviet entry visa before he can get his Cuban transit visa.
All right. He goes back to the villa. The man tells him a Soviet visa will take. four months to arrange if he can get it at all. Leon says that when he was in Finland he got a visa in two days. The man says, “But this is Mexico City,” and Leon expects him to add, “Hotbed of intrigue.”
He eats the soup of the day, rice and meat. It costs forty-two cents. He checks the menu against the dictionary, then takes a bite of food, then checks again.
The next day at the Cuban embassy he demands to see the consul. He stands there shouting at the man. They have a loud and bitter exchange. He knows his rights. He is a friend of the revolution.
Then he goes to the Soviets and tells the man to check with the embassy in Washington. There are letters on file. His wife is Russian. They were married the day Castro won the Lenin Peace Prize.
It occurs to Leon that this man is KGB. So he mentions Kirilenko. Is this a good idea or not? At least it’s a name, it’s a link. It also occurs to Leon that he is being photographed not only by hidden Soviet cameras but probably by CIA cameras concealed in the building across the street or in a parked car or dangling, for all he knows, from a satellite in the sky.
His room number is eighteen. It is almost October and he was born on the eighteenth. David Ferrie was born on March 18. They have sat and discussed this. The year of Ferrie’s birth is 1918.
On Sunday he goes to the movies in the afternoon and again in the evening.
The next day he visits the Cuban embassy, talks to the Soviet embassy on the phone and then visits the Soviet embassy. It occurs to him that the CIA probably taps the Soviet telephones.
Cuba and Russia. Russia is not totally out of the question. He could actually go back to Russia if Marina’s visa comes through. He could visit or actually stay. They could be a family again.
Leon asks the Soviet official if there is any reply to the telegram sent to Washington. He tells the man he has information to offer in return for travel expenses to the USSR. He mentions Kirilenko again.
In the afternoon he consults his copy of Esta Semana, which he picked up in the hotel lobby. Events and locations in English and Spanish. Everything here happens in twos and his eyes constantly dart from one language to the other.
The next day they tell him at both embassies that there are no new developments. Once again he shows his documents, his correspondence. Documents are supposed to provide substance for a claim or a wish. A man with papers is substantial.
But this is the bureaucratic trap, in two languages, three languages, and nothing has effect. He is turned down, frozen out. It’s hard to believe the representatives of the new Cuba are treating him this way. It’s a deep disappointment. He feels he is living at the center of an emptiness. He wants to sense a structure that includes him, a definition clear enough to specify where he belongs. But the system floats right through him, through everything, even the revolution. He is a zero in the system.
For the third or fourth time he eats dinner in the small restaurant next to his hotel. It occurs to him that communications are flowing between agencies in the U. S. based on these wiretaps and the pictures taken by these hidden cameras.
Up to now he has been the only North American in the hotel and in the restaurant. But he realizes someone is looking at him, a man at a table near the kitchen, and Leon is fairly certain it is not a Mexican. He thinks he had a glimpse of the man coming in. But he doesn’t want to look that way and see who it is. He senses something about the man that he doesn’t want to know. There is music playing on a radio that sits on a shelf, maybe a fandango. He shifts in his chair, turning his back completely to the comer of the room where the man is sitting. Because the curious thing, the odd and strange and singular thing is that Leon believes the man is T. J. Mackey. He sips his water carefully. He feels the blood sort of surge up his back. He knows the man is not Latin, from the glimpse. He knows he’s broad-shouldered, hair cut close. He takes the dictionary out of his pocket just for something to do, a busyness, flipping through the pages. It was just a glimpse, a blur. He drinks his water slowly, almost formally, aware of himself, holding himself in a correct and serious way, as anyone does who knows he is being watched.
Walking across the square he hears someone call, “Leon,” but the name is pronounced more Spanish than English and he decides it is not meant for him.
The next day he gets on a bus at eight-thirty in the morning and sits in seat number twelve, which he has reserved in the name H. O. Lee. It is not until they approach the International Bridge, seventeen hours later, that Leon realizes he has forgotten to visit Trotsky’s house, the fortified house in Mexico City where Trotsky spent his last years in exile. The sense of regret makes him feel breathless, physically weak, but he shifts out of it quickly, saying so what.
He carries two bananas in a paper bag and he takes them out and gulps them down before the bus reaches customs. He figures fruit is not allowed across the border and the last thing he wants now is another tussle with authority.
4 October
Mary Frances pushed the vacuum cleaner across the living-room floor. She was feeling bloated and hormonal. It was an effort just to exist, to put one heavy foot ahead of the other. Friday, after school, and she had to vacuum around Suzanne, who knelt on the floor watching cartoon rabbits on TV. She vacuumed over the bump between the living room and dining room. She vacuumed around the table and under the oak sideboard. There was so much drag on her body today, so many resisting forces.
Win walked past the doorway with a knife in his hand.
She pushed the vacuum cleaner back into the living room. It was a five-year-old Hoover with a receptacle unit shaped like a space satellite. Funny, she thought, how she could vacuum back and forth in front of Suzanne and the girl never complained. The girl looked right through her. The girl heard the cartoon voices through the noise of the Hoover.
After dinner Win went down to the basement to investigate a noise. He watched himself come down the plank stairs, head tilted slightly, fingers of the right hand extended. Houses make noises, Mary Frances said. He smelled turpentine and understood how you could become hooked on the smell of turpentine, give yourself up to it, volatile, sticky, piney, your whole life centered on spirits of turpentine. Mary Frances told him that houses shift and settle all the time.
Thanks. But there is sometimes more to it.
He went back up to the living room and sat with her, listening to the radio. She liked the revivalist preachers, men of a certain creepy eloquence.
“Don’t you feel well?” he said.
“I’m all right.”
“I want you to be well.”
“I’m all right.”
“Because it would be devastating if you weren’t well. That mustn’t happen, understand? I actually couldn’t bear it.”
She had a Sears catalogue on her lap. She’d used catalogues to shop when they were posted to remote areas. ISOLATION TROPIC. He wondered what the hell had happened to Mackey.
“Don’t be so solemn,” she said.