"Patsy!": The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald (42 page)

A week and a half later, he concluded: “The work is drab. The money I get has nowhere to be spent ... No places of recreation except the trade union dances.” (That was patently absurd, as he attended the movies almost every night, and there were endless cultural events such as ballet, opera, also comic and dramatic theatre of a type that did not exist in comparably small-to-medium-sized cities in the U.S.) “I have had enough!”

While the entries themselves would be convincing for anyone who gave them a quick read-over, Lee made the mistake of mixing up dates in this creative recreation of the past. He jotted down events as if he had done so at that point in time. What he would later present as his “daily diary” constituted what might better be called a nonfiction novel, filled with specific errors.

*

There was but one sticky point to all of this, as he had truthfully become nostalgic for the U.S. and very much wanted to return. Incredible as it might seem, Lee even longed to see his mother again, despite any ill feelings as to their relationship in the past. After such a long absence, the negatives had grown fuzzy, Marguerite's strange sense of devotion to Lee what he now best recalled. At any rate, the one drawback to going home was Ella, whom Lee at this juncture still believed in love with him.

That would be quickly concluded by her rejection of Lee. He bridled at the realization that he had been an innocent sentimentalist about beautiful women.
Never again
! He swore.

To facilitate his return, if it proved warranted, Lee had followed George's explicit orders as to how he must operate once he arrived back in Moscow. Lee was to offer to give up his U.S. citizenship without ever actually getting around to doing so. Had he, any such reversal would have presented a labyrinth of complications, taking years to resolve. As is, the situation might have been simple. The U.S.S.R. no longer desired to pay large sums of money to someone rendered worthless in terms of valid information who all at once spoke negatively of their land.

Everything might have gone like clockwork had Lee not met Marina. Believing her a none-too-bright Bardot-like beauty, unaware that this constituted a character created specifically for him, Lee fell in love.

At, of course, first sight.

Despite what he had been told in the service by a wise sergeant, he proceeded to make precisely the same mistake as had before, of course expecting totally different results now.

“Marina, will you ...?

“Give me time, Lee. Please? A week ...”

“I'll wait forever if need be, darling.”

Already under orders to say yes, having been instructed to manipulate Lee into asking, Marina insisted on time to think so that Lee, no fool, would not begin to wonder if she accepted too quickly to be believed. The character called Marina had to be consistent and that girl would not jump so fast. She would hesitate, and in so doing make her manipulations appear invisible.

“Lee? Where have you been? Yes, of course, I'll marry you.”

Seemingly, Lee proposed to Marina from his hospital bed. That in actually had been Lee's twin, the real Lee off in Cuba, trying to kill Castro to facilitate the Bay of Pigs invasion by making it difficult for Cubans to respond without their leader.

Lee's mission and the greater scheme had failed miserably. In proposing, the twin had been following orders from George, who withheld this from Lee while Lee recuperated in Miami. Lee's surprise, upon confronting Marina after a return to Minsk, must ring entirely, precisely true.

George knew that women, with their remarkable sixth sense, can detect an act, particularly on the part of a man in their lives, immediately. This held true even if that woman is herself offering a performance. Anyway, Lee's response had to be real.

“Oh.
That!
Why, that's
wonderful
, Marina. Wonderful!”

Reports trickling in from agents in Moscow and Minsk did point to the possibility that Marina was actually working for the KGB. And that, unlike Ella, she had been assigned to marry Lee. He could not be told this, at least not yet, for fear that Lee would become suspicious of her every move. And she, being a perceptive woman, would spot this in his eyes and manner.

This, George could not allow; it would interfere with his learning what he and the CIA must know, what they could discern from observing her attempts to collect information. Also, the Company had grown concerned about a group of Russians living in the Dallas area, serendipitously near Fort Worth, where Robert lived. This allowed Lee a logical reason to settle there.

These were American citizens of Russian descent who claimed aristocratic blood dating back to the czar. Their forefathers fled the Russian Revolution of 1919 even as so many Cubans now settling in Miami had run away from Castro and his own communist takeover forty years later. All claimed to be proud of their Russian heritage but pro-democracy and fervently anti-communist.

The CIA wasn't so certain. As several recent circumstances suggested, they might be employing their status as a welcome minority as a “legend” of their own making, reporting back to the KGB. One way or the other, the CIA had to know.

What better means to learn than have Ozzie bring home a wife who might be working for the KGB? If Marina were such a plant, and if the Dallas/Fort Worth Russians were something other than what they claimed to be, they would contact a recent arrival under the auspices of helping a fellow country-person feel at home, deep in the heart of Texas. While, without her husband realizing it, put his bride to work within their cell.

On the other hand, if Lee turned out not to be such a fool but a CIA agent, so much the better. Marina could employ her feminine wiles to draw from her fool of a husband all sorts of information he believed spoken in a special sort of confidence.

*

“I am returning to America. Will you go with me?”

“Oh, yes,” Marina exclaimed, slipping into a seemingly spontaneous dance of joy. “Anywhere, Lee, in the world!”

“Now, I know you are filled with childish dreams about streets paved with gold. This is not the way things are.”

“Those are only stories. Still, I know that life will be better for me there than it is, or ever can be, here.”

Lee took Marina in his arms and kissed her. “I will do all I can to make our lives wonderful once we arrive. I promise.”

“I know that, Lee. Oh, but I can't wait. Just think! Me, little Marina: In the wonderful world that is the U.S.A.”

When Richard Snyder in Moscow received word from Lee that he not only wanted to return home but bring a Soviet bride with him, the official Consul and secretive CIA agent made certain the process went as smoothly as possible from his end. The KGB, eager to have Marina overseas, contacted the passport office to speed things along.

The only possible problems might be the FBI. There, so far as anyone knew, Lee was indeed a traitor, perhaps coming home to spy on the U.S. for the Russians. Hoover ordered his agents to question Oswald on return, the CIA still insistent that the FBI must not be allowed to know what the Company was actually up to. Not only with Lee, but as to any of their secret operatives.

Previous to the Oswalds' arrival, the FBI set up a special file to monitor their travels: 327-925D. Agent John Fain was sent from D.C. to the Fort Worth office to study Lee's every move, then report back to J. Edgar. This necessitated that the CIA create a counter-network to throw Fain off course.

For Hoover to learn Lee was a government agent, working for “the other side” of information security, without his own branch having been alerted to this for fear that the fewer people in on a secret the better, would likely cause a blow-up. Which could further complicate the duel of wits being waged between the Bureau in D.C. and the Company not far away in Langley VA. The situation had already grown tense enough without
that.

So even as Fain attempted to learn more about what was going on in northern Texas, interviewing Lee's relatives, various CIA operatives were dispatched to keep knowledge about Lee's actual status, which Marguerite and Robert knew nothing about, from surfacing. Fain's interviews with them were, then, superfluous. On the other hand, once the couple arrived, the Company had to continually watch over Lee and Marina, in order to maintain the secretive status of his “legend.” And hers!

Meanwhile, Lee flew from Minsk to Moscow on July 8, 1961, checking in at Hotel Berlin, visiting Snyder in a considerably less irritated mood than Lee had been in, or performed, on their previous meeting. Several days later, Marina joined Lee and was interviewed by Snyder's co-worker John McVickar, who found her a pleasant young woman. McVickar stamped her papers as “acceptable without suspicions or hesitation.”

Pregnant, Marina announced that while the process took its course, she would fly to Kharkov to bid farewell to an old aunt. In actuality, the woman calling herself ‘Marina' met with KGB officials, planning out her long-term approach in America.

This left Lee to spend his 22
nd
birthday alone, less than pleased at this status. After all, the previous year he had two beautiful Russians with him. That now seemed a lifetime ago. Lee wondered about contacting Rima and Rosa but guessed that, like himself, they had gone through considerable life changes during the intervening months. Those women would be totally different people now, with little if anything to say to a man who had briefly figured prominently in their own lives.

So Lee lay in bed, naked, dreaming of Marina, and the child that soon would add so much to their now intertwined lives.

Also, trying, as always, to grasp who Lee Oswald really was. This was a question that would consume this man throughout his brief existence.

As I study, relentlessly study, and learn new words, or discover the true meaning of words I thought I knew, I come to the conclusion that I am either a stoic or a narcissist.

So ardently do I wish to see myself as a stoic, in the old Roman sense: Refusing to show any emotions, however deeply I may experience them. Even moreso, perhaps, than ‘normals.'

Always, though, putting on a false front to conceal my pain when insulted or rejected, so often the case in my life.

Am I better off now? I believed myself to have come so far, achieved so much, transformed completely.

Yet here I am, alone my birthday. As alienated and isolated as I felt when, as a lost little boy ...

Also, I fear myself to be narcissist: Unable to love, truly love, anyone or anything other than myself. Is it possible that I might be both? Like a schizophrenic, which I sometimes fear I may be, roaring from one extreme to the other.

Both elements inside me, waging a constant war with one another, for my mind, my soul. If such a thing even exists.

*

Back home, when a blithe J. Edgar Hoover suggested to the State Department that it might not be in America's best interest to have Lee back, Robert I. Owens in the Soviet Affairs section, he very much in the know thanks to constant contact with Allan Dulles, filed a report stating: “it is in the interest of the United States to get Lee Harvey Oswald and his family out of the Soviet Union and into the United States as soon as possible.”

To Hoover's disbelief and anger, the other agencies set his deep concerns aside, doing all they could to pave the way for Lee and his bride, Marina now seven months pregnant, to come to America. On February 15, 1962, she gave birth to a daughter whom they named June. This occurred while waiting for her exit visa which, inexplicably to Lee, took much longer to process than had been expected. The Russian government had decided to purposefully create a delay so that the child would be born there. They were planning ahead: should it ever be necessary for Marina to make a hurried return home, the baby, born a Soviet citizen, would not create a problem that might delay their hasty exit from the U.S.

“Oh, Lee,” Marina wept, these of course crocodile tears, she fully aware of the reasons for a slow-down in the process. “What if we are not allowed to leave? What will we do?”

“They can't stop us. I won't let them.” How strong he felt when speaking so to Marina, the stoic side of him dominant now. Lee projected a false sense of total security. The narcissist in him too
loved to believe this little lie about his own powers to change fate, determine the
outcome, and win in the end. Lee had continued reading
Nietzsche. A seminal line, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” leapt up at him from the page.

It all makes sense now. My disastrous childhood? Necessary to make me the powerful man I am today
.
Thank you, then, God, for putting me through all the torture I cursed you for, over so many years. Not random and unfair, as I once falsely assumed.

All part of your great master plan. Assuming, of course, that there is a higher being, which I doubt. But do
not
dismiss.

Who am I? Someday, when I come to know for certain if you are there or not, then I will also know who I am.

*

Husband, wife and child soon traveled through Poland, East Germany, West Germany and the Netherlands. One night they were obliged to share a dinner table with an American couple. When during a pleasant conversation the husband inquired as to what Lee did for a living, the response, accompanied by a sardonic grin, was: “I might just be a spy!” All laughed loudly.

Then followed a joyous four-day vacation in Amsterdam. Arm in arm, the happy couple and their adorable child wandered the quaint streets, enjoyed sausage-rolls on the docks, giggled at brazen prostitutes behind red glass windows, and visited the Van Gogh museum. Lee experienced one of his great epiphanies there, staring at the famed self-portrait of a misunderstood man, his sad, bitter eyes gazing out at the onlooker as the world around him, as he portrayed it, reflected the artist's tortured psyche.