The Berlin Conspiracy (27 page)

He sat there with a stunned look on his face for a moment after I’d finished. “What can I do?” he finally said.

“Go home,” I answered firmly. “And forget about all this. Go back to doing an honest day’s work, like stealing cars.”

“It must be stopped,” he said.

“I’m not sure it can be.”

“It
must
be!”

He stood up and paced back and forth a couple of times. “I believed you were an agent for STASI, which is no different than an agent for the Soviets!” he said frantically. “If I believed it, the world will believe it!” He stopped in his tracks and looked at me, an expression of alarm on his face. “What will be the consequences of this?!”

I shouldn’t have told him, of course. I’m not even sure why I did, except that I wanted to remove that look of contempt he gave me when I came into the room. I think I probably liked being Bogart in his eyes and I wasn’t willing to give it up. It turned out to be a costly conceit.

He dropped back onto the bed with wilted shoulders, looking totally defeated. “How can it be?” he said, more to himself than to me. “How can something like this happen with
America
?”

“What do you think America is, Horst?” I asked, not expecting an answer. He frowned and looked down into his lap, which I took to be an expression of disappointment, or
dejection, or something else. In fact, he was formulating his answer. He began softly.

“I was nine years old in the summer of 1948 when the Russians blocked all of Berlin. We had no food, no electricity, and no way to escape. It sounds like a nightmare, I know, but it was the most amazing time for me. Do you know how I spent this summer? Each day I woke at dawn and, with my friends, we ran to the same place, just near the airport, to climb onto a pile of rubble where we could watch the airplanes land. They came one after the other, night and day, American planes filled with not just food and coal, but also with hope. Hope that we could remain free … We would stand there, all day sometimes, and wave our arms to each of the pilots as he crossed in front of us, hoping that he would see us and understand that we wanted to thank him. Then one day we saw the most fantastic thing. … As one of the planes flew over us there came a shower of boxes, each with its own small parachute, filling the sky. Do you know what was in these boxes? … Chocolates! Imagine it! Standing on the rubble of our city, with no food to eat, and the sky is raining with boxes of chocolates!” He paused to reflect on the memory for a moment, allowing himself a little smile before continuing.

“Then the next day came the same plane again and there were more boxes, and again the day after until I think every child in Berlin was getting a box of chocolates from this American pilot! It was the most amazing thing ever I have seen!” He shook his head, still in awe of the idea of the sky filled with boxes of chocolates.

I didn’t say anything because, of all things, I had a lump in my throat. What a strange condition for a terminal cynic like me to find himself in. Horst looked up and, I think, sensed my situation. He gave me a schoolboy grin, from ear to ear, and said, “Perhaps one day, when I become a big
producer in Hollywood, I can make a movie from this story. It can be quite a tearjerker, don’t you think?”

I extracted a promise from Horst that he would slip away and go home in return for my assurance that I had a cunning plan to foil the bad guys and save the world. As we know, people will believe anything if it’s what they want to believe. And I believed I was rid of Horst.

I started in on the steak, but it was cold and I had no appetite anyway, in spite of not eating for over twenty-four hours. I managed to force a few bites down and was pushing the tray away when Sam came in. I think he was there to say a final good-bye, which didn’t do wonders for my confidence in the cunning plan.

“Where did you find Horst?” I asked him.

“He was after a visa,” he explained. “Wanted to immigrate. Turned down because of his police record.”

“You told him you’d get him in?”

“That’s right.”

“Do me a favor, Sam. Leave him alone.”

“Sure,” he said offhandedly, sitting down and helping himself to my dinner. “I don’t need him anymore. Why do you care?”

“I don’t know. Can you get him a visa?”

“I don’t see why not. Anything else?” Sam’s way of asking if I had any unfinished business I wanted him to take care of if I wasn’t able to.

“Can’t think of anything,” I said.

He nodded and we exchanged a brief look. There wasn’t anything to say really, and even if there was neither of us was going to say it. It wasn’t necessary.

“They’ll come for you just before sunrise,” he said.
“They’ll put you in cuffs until you get there, wherever ‘there’ is.”

“It would help to know.”

“I couldn’t get it,” he said. “Harvey would see his grandmother as a security risk. But I do know that there’ll be three shooters, at least one in an elevated position, from an upper floor of a tallish building. That’s where you’ll be, too. Once the hit is confirmed and the president’s down, you’ll be given a chance to run. A Secret Service agent will be waiting around the corner to put two in your chest. The team’ll get out in the confusion and the world will be left with one lone assassin, dead as a doornail.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it on my account,” I said. “When should I make my move?”

“Go for the shooter first. If you get him, they have to abort.”

“How close will I be?”

“Not a clue,” he said sheepishly.

“How about afterward?”

“You’re on your own.”

“Jesus, Sam.”

“You’re gonna have to play it by ear,” he said, heading for the door. “Your specialty.”

“Do me a favor if it doesn’t work out, Sam.”

“Just name it,” he said.

“Die a slow and painful death.”

He chuckled and left without saying good luck. We both knew if I had to count on luck, I’d be out of it.

I lay in the dark, hoping for sleep, exhausted but wide awake, experiencing a strange sense of stillness and serenity. It wasn’t that I was filled with confidence about what was to
come. Far from it. I think I felt at peace because I’d finally put the pieces of my life together and they seemed to make some kind of twisted sense.

I didn’t need Horst to sell me on America. I was sold when I first stepped onto the crowded streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and was met with a surge of humanity hustling to get their piece of the dream. The America I found wasn’t pure or pristine, not by any stretch of the imagination, and the good guys didn’t always win. The streets weren’t paved with gold and chocolates didn’t fall out of the sky, either, but the air was filled with optimism. It was alive with possibilities, with the belief that good people who worked hard would be rewarded with a good life, free from the tyranny and constraints they’d left behind.

I saw America at its best and I saw the worst of it, but I always believed in it and I would always be there when it needed to be defended. And I don’t mean the buildings or the roads or the bridges, or even the people. I mean the idea of it. The simple idea that individual freedom is something people are born with—the state can’t give it to you, it can only take it away. That’s it. Easy to put into words but, judging by the world’s history, tough as hell to put into practice.

I’m not talking about the Fourth of July, flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it kind of freedom. That’s something else. I mean the whoever-you-are, whatever-you-do, no-matter-how-you-look or what-you-think, welcome-to-the-party, be-an-American kind of freedom.

And don’t let anyone tell you that the Soviet Union didn’t pose a threat to that kind of freedom, either, because it did. It was a brutal tyranny that stripped its people of their rights and took away their humanity, and we needed to defend against it. But what I didn’t see when I was in the front line of our secret war was the disadvantage we labored under,
and the effect it was having on us. It would have been suicide to meet the enemy on the battlefield, so we were forced underground, and in that dark world we had to play the game by their rules.

Subterfuge, deceit, treachery, subversion, betrayal—they were the tried and tested tools of tyranny, not of a free society. The United States didn’t even have a peacetime foreign intelligence service until 1947. None. So we were the new kids on the block, and the longer we played their game, the more we became like them. Not the American people, of course. They were blissfully unaware of the creeping tyranny that was growing like a cancer inside their government. It had spread, unseen, until it would strike at the heart of its host, killing the essence of what it was supposed to be defending.

The coup was an inevitable consequence of giving men like Henry Fisher and Harvey King the responsibility for our freedom. They had planned to attack our own troops at Guantánamo. I guess that said it all. We had become our own enemy.

I had turned a blind eye and gone fishing, mistaking disengagement for freedom. Like a lot of people, I saw our dirty war as a necessary evil, something we needed in order to defend against the enemy at the gate. Now I realized that the enemy amongst us was the more dangerous one—and they were already inside the wall.

So I lay in the dark, feeling calm because I was ready, at last, to rejoin the battle.

I gave up on sleep
around five o’clock, went to the window, and watched a soft, gray light slowly displace the predawn darkness. I wondered if June 26, 1963, would be just another day, or if it would go down in history as one of those bloodstained dates that become etched in our minds forever. Either way, I was glad it had arrived.

The door swung open and Chase sauntered in, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a black attache case. He stopped in the middle of the room when I turned to face him. “What’s the matter, Jack? Trouble sleeping?” He chuckled to himself.

“You know, Roy, before today’s over, one of us is gonna be dead, that’s for sure, but if I was you I wouldn’t get too cocky about which one it’s gonna be.” He smirked, pulled his jacket back to show me his brand-new Anaconda, then
walked over to a dresser, opened a drawer, and removed a folded white shirt, still in its packaging. He threw it to me.

“Put this on,” he said, then tossed a set of handcuffs onto the bed. “And these.”

I unpinned the shirt, slipped it on. I noticed that the dummy pack of Luckys was still on the bedside table, reached over to pick it up, and thought Chase looked at me funny. I was probably being paranoid, but if he checked, that’d be it, lights out.

“Smoke?” I offered him the pack, feeling for the trigger in case he said yes. But he waved it off, so I slipped the Luckys into my shirt pocket, then snapped the manacles onto my wrists.

He ushered me through a series of empty rooms, down a narrow staircase, and through a large basement kitchen, where we exited from a back door onto an expansive lawn that sloped down toward a wide, slow-moving river. A fresh morning breeze and the scent of dew on the grass made me realize how stale the air had been inside the estate. The building was a heavy-handed version of an Italian Renaissance villa, with twin towers connected by a two-story gallery, ceramic tiles on the roof, arched windows, and a terrace with curved steps leading down to a fountain. I wondered about the owner, but it didn’t matter, so I let it go.

We followed a gravel path down to a pier where the Interceptor was tied up. Chase freed one of my wrists and cuffed me to a chrome rail in the back while he prepped the boat, leaving the briefcase by the pilot’s seat on the upper deck. If I sat down, my arm would’ve been above my head, so I stood, leaning against the rail.

“What’s your angle in all this?” I called to Chase as he turned the engine over. He looked at me warily, like it was some kind of trick question.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean how do you feel about killing Kennedy?”

“I don’t feel anything about it,” he shrugged, crawling out onto the bow to cast off the line. “He’s just another guy.”

“He’s president of the United States.”

He considered that, then said, “They say he’d do all sorts of shit if he got reelected, but what the fuck do I know? … I know it’d be a damn shame if they pull us out of Vietnam….”

“You like it there.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I like it. It’s a good setup.”

“What do you do?”

“Hunt down gooks and grease ‘em,” he answered coolly, then adding with a perverse grin, “I’d hate to see my license to kill get revoked.” He revved the engine, put the boat in gear, and slipped away from the mooring. I decided I would have no qualms about killing him.

He took it easy on the throttle and the boat cut smoothly through the calm waters, just the gentle hum of the engine intruding on the peaceful setting of thick woodland and pink sky on the eastern horizon. We were heading south, so I guessed we were passing through the Berliner Forest in the northwestern corner of the city.

I stared into our wake and tried to recall the itinerary I’d seen in the paper the previous day. Air Force One was scheduled to land at nine thirty—about four hours away—and if I was right about our location, we were heading straight for Tegel. But that didn’t make much sense. Sam had said that at least one of the shooters would be in an elevated position and the only elevated position at the airport was the control tower, which was ridiculous. Anyway, security would be too tight there. They needed crowds, where a team could penetrate, do the deed, then disappear in the confusion. There’d be no shortage of crowds once
Kennedy hit the streets—upward of a million people had lined the route from Bonn to Cologne, and Berlin would be no different.

After landing, the party was scheduled to travel by motorcade to Brandenburg Gate, where the president would get his first look at the wall. His limousine—it had been open in Cologne—would have to pass through downtown Berlin, where the streets would be filled with well-wishers hoping to catch a glimpse, maybe even shake Kennedy’s hand. And there would be plenty of high-rise buildings along the way—private offices and hotels where a gunman could easily set up without being noticed or interfered with. Not a bad scenario, except that hitting a target in a moving car with a long-range rifle is a low-percentage shot, no matter how good the sniper. So unless the president’s driver, a Secret Service agent, was part of the team and was going to slow down or stop the car at the critical moment, hitting the motorcade seemed too risky an option.