The Theta Prophecy (18 page)

Year: 1963

This time, when the phone rang, McCone thought about not only allowing it to ring forever but also about writing up a resignation letter and dropping it at his secretary’s desk on the way out of the building.

The attempt in Tampa hadn’t gone any better than the one in Chicago. And that was putting it politely. Even he had to admit the second attempt had not only gone worse than the first, by any measure it had to be considered a complete disaster. It wasn’t as bad as the Bay of Pigs, in which the CIA had been willing to make itself look like a pack of bumbling idiots at the greater embarrassment to the president, but only because this blunder wasn’t public knowledge. It also wasn’t as bad as the project to give unwitting subjects doses of LSD just to see their reactions, only to have one of them kill himself. That, too, was still a secret, but when the media heard about it they would have a field day. McCone hoped to be long gone from the agency by the time that happened.

Although this flub wasn’t as bad as either of those, he still wanted to avoid the conversation he knew was coming. At least those operations had been before his time. He had inherited their legacy but hadn’t been responsible for them. This time, just like in Chicago, he was the man ultimately in charge of ensuring the mission was a success. And, just like in Chicago, the president had emerged unharmed. Not a single shot had been fired. But now, even worse than in Chicago, two members of the team had been detained by Tampa police after anonymous tips alerted the local authorities to their suspicious activities.

It had taken some fast action and some major string pulling to get those men out of the police station, along with any record that they had been there, especially before people started asking questions. If by chance someone from one of the papers had spotted the men and started poking around, the entire thing could have fallen apart.

After getting out of jail and being taken back to a safe house, the men reported that there were not only locks on the doors that hadn’t been there previously, but also a noxious gas in each room. Even if they could have set up where they were supposed to, they would have needed breathing masks to see clearly, which they didn’t have.

Someone knew.

The phone rang again. How many times was that now? Six? Seven?

Through his office window, he saw his secretary looking at him with a strained smile. She could hear his private line ringing. Did she assume something bad was going on or did she already know it for a fact?

With one fist clenched, holding his breath, he picked up the phone.

“Just listen to me,” Martin said, not waiting for introductions or excuses or anything else. “I don’t want to hear about why the operation was a failure or about who called in the tips or why in God’s green earth some of your men were arrested.”

Tips? Arrested men? McCone wondered how someone outside the agency already knew about all of this.

Martin said, “I don’t want to hear about any of that. All I want to hear is that our goal will be accomplished during the next event. The third time’s the charm, right?”

McCone looked at his copy of the president’s itinerary. Immediately after leaving Tampa, JFK was flying to Dallas, Texas. That meant McCone had two days to get a team in place, get them set up, and execute what two other teams had already failed to do, all without getting caught and bringing anything back on the agency. It wasn’t possible.

“Sir, I—”

But he was already being interrupted before he could explain that he needed more time. And when the hell had he started calling his peer—a man everyone else in Washington would see as his equal—“sir?”

“I don’t want to hear it. All you have to do is get a team together. Get them in place. I’ll have my own men there to make sure the operation is a success this time.”

“Sir, I—”

“If my suspicions are correct, this is exactly what I have feared, and in that case there was nothing you could have done to be successful in the first mission. The book has foretold of this sort of thing. In a way, I hope that is the case because then it means your men may actually get it right this time.”

What was McCone supposed to say to that? Thank you? And what was Martin talking about, that his suspicions were correct? Did he really think someone might have traveled back from the future to prevent what they were trying to do?

The Fed chairman said, “I’ll have men there to spot this individual, if he really exists. You just do your part and keep your fingers crossed that you get it done this time.”

What squad of men did Martin have at his disposal? He didn’t work for law enforcement. He didn’t have the military at his beck and call. He didn’t even have black teams, as McCone referred to them, the men who went in, no questions asked, and assassinated whomever they were told to, whether a foreign leader, a nosy reporter, or whomever else needed to be silenced.

“Listen here,” McCone said, “I’ll need to know if another team will be operating near my guys so there’s no confusion.” It didn’t take a lot of experience to know that having too many cooks in the kitchen was a good way for all of them to get burned.

He didn’t get an answer.

“Hello?” he said. “Hello?” But the other man had already hung up.

It would never work, McCone told himself. Not enough time to prepare. Not enough reliable men in place to use for the operation. Too many unknowns. Even if they did manage to kill JFK, he was sure the operation would be messy. With so little time to get set up, the shooters would either make it obvious that a single man hadn’t acted alone or else bystanders would actually spot the other gunmen.

It was an approaching disaster, but it was also inevitable. McCone couldn’t quit right now. Not like this. The entire thing would fall on him. He knew how things like this worked. If he did want to resign, he could do so after the operation was a success. Not until then.

He envisioned Dulles, his predecessor, sitting at home with his wife, enjoying the sunset or perhaps listening to flocks of geese as they flew past. One of the men had made the right choice and one of them had not. It was obvious which was which.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he reopened them, he flipped through a folder with the names of everyone he had at his disposal who was located in the Gulf Coast area. He needed at least six men. With only two days to prepare, he considered using even more. He found a logistics man he had used during an operation in Central America. That was one. He found a pair of sharpshooters who had just come back from picking off targets in the jungles of South America. That was two and three. He found a lookout and a driver, both unproven, but nearby. That was four and five. He needed another shooter.

On the fifth and final page of names, he reviewed the candidates who were, for one reason or another, no longer deemed reliable. These were men who either had criminal records, ties to other countries, or personal problems. Or, in the case of the man he chose, all three.

Lee Harvey Oswald. He would be assigned the role of Member 1, the man who would take the blame for everything. McCone would kill two birds with one stone. He would have his sixth and final team member and he would get rid of someone who had burned too many bridges.

Poor Oswald, McCone thought. The guy had no idea it was supposed to have been Harold Silver, in a completely different city, who would be blamed for one of the worst days in the country’s history.

And like that, the Theta Timeline shifted once more.

Year: 1963

The day after JFK’s motorcade drove through the Tampa streets without any problems, Winston flew to Dallas. Once again, the parade route was published ahead of the president’s visit, and once again he was able to find a strip of warehouses and other buildings that would provide ideal hiding spots for the snipers. This time, they were located adjacent to a large Dallas park area called Dealey Plaza. As he had done in Chicago and Tampa, Winston bought locks and pepper spray and scouted the area.

Soon, he knew, he would have to come up with a different way to stop these men. Locks and pepper spray wouldn’t stop assassins forever. They would adapt and, even with a Thinker trying to keep JFK alive, they would eventually succeed due to possessing greater resources and materials.

Four hours before the motorcade was scheduled to pass by Dealey Plaza, he got out of his rental car, threw one duffel bag over each shoulder, and began walking toward the first warehouse.

Right before he got to the rear door of the three-story brick structure, a man called out, “Hey do you know where the closest bus stop is?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not from around here,” Winston said, as he turned to look at the man.

It was a police officer who was asking. Winston’s first thought was why a cop would need to find a bus stop when he must have a patrol car. Then a slew of other questions bombarded him: Shouldn’t the cop be familiar with the area and know exactly where every bus stop was? Why didn’t the cop have a name on his uniform? Where had the cop appeared from?

The police officer was looking at the two bags slung around Winston’s shoulders. He had a tiny photograph in his hand, a man’s portrait, which he held out so Winston could see it. It was him. His mug shot from years earlier in San Francisco. Him with a broken nose and a gash on his forehead, but clearly him.

“Hey, you’re that guy who lost his memory, right?” the man said. “Jesse Cantrou.”

Winston was too confused to say yes or no or to ask any of the questions that were overwhelming him.

The man took a step forward, looked at Winston’s flat nose where the doctor had reset it, then back at the photograph of the man with the bandaged nose and said, “Yeah, that’s a nose that’s been broken.”

Winston, still facing the cop, was so confused that his head fell to one side as he stared, open-mouthed, at the man in front of him.

The cop took another step forward. That was when Winston realized the uniform was not only missing the officer’s last name, the badge on the uniform was plastic and didn’t say “Dallas” anywhere on it.

“Weren’t you in Tampa a couple days ago?” the cop said. “Then in Chicago before that? I bet if I look in those bags I’ll find locks and canisters of gas, right?”

But before Winston could say anything, the man raised his right hand. A gun was there, pointed at him.

A terrible force punched Winston in the chest. He didn’t even remember falling backward to the ground. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t breathe.

“I tried my best,” he wanted to tell his parents and brother and everyone else he loved, but no words could be found, and no way to send them to the people who needed them.

The cop was standing over him, aiming the gun at his face. Then nothingness.

Later that day, as a country mourned and hundreds of men descended upon Dallas to try and figure out what had happened, a body was found in a dumpster, only blocks away from where JFK was assassinated. No one had seen the man before. When his picture was shown that night on the few minutes of the news that weren’t dedicated to the assassination, people were asked to call the police if they knew who the man was. No one did.

And once again, the Theta Timeline had shifted. No longer would kids grow up seeing the president die in Chicago as they once had, although that reality still existed out there along with every other possible reality. Nor would they see grainy footage of JFK being killed as he passed by crowds of onlookers in Tampa. Now, the Theta Timeline had shifted to one in which the president had been shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Year: 1963

This time, when the phone rang, McCone smiled and picked it up before it could ring a second time.

“Congratulations are in order. We got our man,” Martin said.

“Yes,” McCone said slowly, grimacing, not liking how bold the Fed chairman was being. Surely, someone was listening to these calls. “Yes, we did.”

Everything had gone according to plan. Lee Harvey Oswald was already telling anyone who would listen that he was a patsy, but he would be dead soon, too. There had been people taking pictures and filming the motorcade as it passed through Dealey Plaza. McCone had sent teams around the city to retrieve any of the film before it could be developed. It couldn’t have gone better. Even so, it was out of character for Martin to say anything on the phone that might incriminate him.

But the Fed chairman seemed unconcerned. “Oh, that. Yes, you did well, too,” he said.

McCone turned down the volume of the television in his office. All they were talking about was the assassination anyway. Some of the anchormen were even crying.

“Wait, what are you talking about?” he said.

Martin chuckled again, in a way that McCone was quickly beginning to resent. He didn’t mind when someone knew more than he did, but he did mind when it was held over his head.

“We’ve preserved the future,” Martin said, then hung up.