The Company: A Novel of the CIA (63 page)

"The pill you are holding, along with its two companions, contains a botulism toxin that I personally tested on three monkeys—all were clinically dead within minutes. I obtained the poison from the Army Chemical Corps stockpile at Fort Detrick in Maryland. I don't mind telling you that I had the run of their biological warfare laboratory. They offered me the bacterium Francisew tularensis that causes tularemia, which you know as rabbit fever. They offered me brucellae, which causes undulant fever. Oh, I did have a choice, I promise you. I could have had tuberculosis or anthrax or smallpox, I could have had encephalitis lethargica, better known as sleeping sickness. But I preferred to stick with the tried-and-true botulism toxin, which cause paralysis of the respiratory muscles and suffocation. There are several things you should take note of. These particular aspirins should not be used in boiling liquids—I am thinking of soup or coffee or tea. They can be used in water, beer, wine—"

"How about milkshakes?"

"Yes, yes, milkshakes would be ideal. But I must caution you that the potency will not last forever."

"How long have I got?"

"I would highly recommend that my little treasures be employed inside of three months. Anything longer and the pills risk becoming unstable— they might disintegrate in your fingers before you could use them, they might lose enough potency to produce only severe stomach cramps."

"You did a terrific job," the Sorcerer said. He carefully popped the pill with the word Bayar back into the bottle. "Anything else I need to know, doctor?"

"Let me see... Oh, dear, yes, Mr. Harvey, there is one more thing—you will want to wash your hands very thoroughly before going out to lunch."

Rising with excruciating slowness, the large freight elevator worked its way up to the third floor of the warehouse on Chicago's Printer s Row, south of the Loop. Through the steel grating over his head, the Sorcerer could make out the giant spool reeling in the cable. The disfigured man operating the elevator worked the control knob and brought it, in a series of small jerks, flush with the floor. Two of Giancana's boys, wearing gray coveralls with "Southside Gym" emblazoned on their chests, pulled open the double grilled doors as if they were parting a curtain and Torriti ambled off the elevator into the most enormous room he'd ever been in. Except for several hundred cartons of alcohol marked "Duty Free Only" stacked against one wall, the space was empty. A football field away, or so it seemed to Torriti, he could see Mooney Giancana sitting behind the only piece of furniture in view, a very large table that once might have served for cutting fabric. Behind Giancana, gossamer threads of light pierced the grimy windowpanes. Several men wearing sports jackets with shoulder padding—or was that their natural build?—lounged against iron stanchions, their eyes glued to the television set on one end of the table.

At the elevator, one of the men in coveralls held out a shoebox and nodded toward the Sorcerer's chest and ankle. Torriti removed his hand guns and deposited them in the box. "You jokers going to give me a baggage check?" he asked, an irritable smirk squirming onto his face.

One of the Southside gymnasts took the question seriously. "You're duh only one here—we ain't gonna mix nothin' up."

From across the room Giancana called, "Come on duh fuck over. Kennedy's gettin' sworn in on duh TV."

The Sorcerer moseyed across the room. Giancana, smoking a thick Havana as he watched the television screen through dark glasses, pointed to a chair without looking at it or his visitor. One of Giancana's heavies splashed Champagne into a plastic cup and handed it to Torriti.

"You celebrating something, Mooney?" the Sorcerer inquired.

"Fuckin' right—I'm celebratin' Kennedy movin' into duh fuckin' White House." Giancana laughed. The heavies laughed along with him.

On the television, Kennedy, bareheaded and dressed in formal tails, could be seen standing at the podium and delivering, in the clipped nasal voice that Torriti instantly recognized, his inaugural address. "Let the word go forth, from this time and place, to friend and foe alike..."

"Who would have thought Joe's kid would become President?" one of the heavies said.

"I thought, is who fuckin' thought," Giancana said.

"...born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace..."

"To fuckin' Jack," Giancana said, raising his plastic glass to the TV. "Salute."

"I didn't know you were interested in politics, Mooney," the Sorcerer said with a straight face.

"You're pullin' my fuckin' leg," Giancana said. "I voted for duh fucker. Uh bunch of times. You could even say I campaigned for him. If it wasn't for me he wouldn't be in duh fuckin' White House."

"...every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price..."

"You got out the vote," the Sorcerer said.

Giancana glanced sideways at Torriti. "Fuckin' right I got out duh vote. I got out so many votes he won Illinois."

"...support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure the survival and the success of liberty."

"Enough of dis bullshit aready," Giancana muttered.

"You want for me to turn it off, Mooney?" one of the heavies asked.

"Turn duh sound off, leave duh pitcher on." Giancana scraped his chair around so that he was facing Torriti across the vast expanse of table. "So what brings you to duh Windy City?"

"Sightseeing." He glanced at the four leather dog collars screwed into the wood of the table, wondering what they could be used for. "People tell me Lake Michigan is worth seeing."

Giancana snickered. "I seen it so many times I don't fuckin' see it no more when I look."

Torriti held out his glass for a refill. Giancana exploded. "For cryin' out loud, you guys are supposed to fill his fuckin' glass before he asks. Where were you brought up, in uh fuckin' garbage dump?"

One of the heavies lurched over and filled the Sorcerer's glass. Torriti drained off the Champagne as if it were water, then waved off another refill. "Do you think you could—" He tossed his head in the direction of the hoods listening to the conversation.

"Leave duh fuckin' bottle an take uh powder," Giancana ordered. The men retreated to the other side of the warehouse floor.

"So have you made any progress in our little matter?" Torriti inquired.

"Yeah, you could say dat. I got uh guy who works in duh Libre Hotel in Havana. In duh cafeteria, as uh matter of fact, which is where Castro goes once, twice uh week for his milkshakes."

"What's your friend's name?"

Giancana's eyes rolled in their sockets. "Don't be uh fuckin' wise guy." It hit Torriti that the dog collars could be used to tie down the wrists and ankles of a wise guy spread-eagled on the table. "At least tell me something about him," he said. "Why's he willing to take the risk..."

"He owes me uh favor."

"That's some favor."

Giancana flashed a brutal smile. "Favors is what makes duh world go round." He puffed on the cigar and blew a perfectly round circle of smoke into the air, then a second one and giggled with pleasure. "So do you got duh Alka-Seltzer?"

Torriti pulled the half-filled aspirin bottle from the pocket of his jacket. "There are three aspirins at the bottom of the bottle—any one of them can kill a horse."

Giancana kept his eye on the bottle as he sucked thoughtfully on his cigar. "How will duh guy in Havana know which three are spiked?"

Torriti explained about the word Bayer being spelled wrong. Giancana's face actually creased into a smile. "Awright," he said. "We're ln business."

The Sorcerer pushed himself to his feet. "So when do you figure this can be taken care of?"

The Cosa Nostra boss of Chicago turned to watch Kennedy on the television screen. "I used to know uh guy who could read lips even though he wasn't deaf," he said. "He told me he learned how in case he went deaf. Duh moral of duh story is you got to plan ahead." He looked back at Torriti. "Like I told you in Miami, deze things take time. I got to get deze aspirins to Havana. I got to organize duh fast boat dat'll pick up my friend afterwoods. After dat he's got to find duh right occasion."

"So what are we talking about?"

Giancana tittered. "You tell me what'd be convenient for your Wall Street friends."

"We're January twentieth," Torriti said. "You need to make sure that the friend pays back the favor he owes anytime before, say, ten April."

"Ten April," Giancana repeated. "Dat ought to work out awright."

Philip Swett came away from the luncheon with Jack Kennedy feeling mighty pleased with himself. It had been a private affair in a small dining room off the President's living quarters on the second floor. Dean Rusk, Kennedy's Secretary of State, and McGeorge Bundy, the President's special assistant for national security, had joined them. CIA Director Allen Dulles, who had been conferring with Bundy and his staff in the basement of the White House all morning, was invited at the last minute when Kennedy discovered he was still in the building. Presiding over a light lunch of cold Virginia ham, cucumber salad, and white wine, Kennedy had gone out of his way to publicly thank Swett for his fund-raising efforts. "My father always said he was willing to buy me the election," Kennedy had joked, "but he flat-out refused to pay for a landslide, which is why the vote was so close. Kidding aside, you made a big difference, Phil."

"Believe me, Mr. President," Swett had responded, "a lot of people, me included, sleep better at night knowing it's your hand that's on the helm, and not Nixon's."

Over coffee and mints the talk had turned to Cuba. Rusk had filled in the President on the contents of an overnight cable from Moscow: the American embassy's political officer had been told by a Soviet journalist with close ties to the Politburo that Khrushchev would respond to any overt American attack on Cuba by closing off access routes into Berlin and constructing a great wall separating East and West Germany. Kennedy had
pulled a long face and, paraphrasing the opening line from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," had remarked, "April is going to be the cruelest month after all." To which Dulles had remarked, in a booming voice, "Assuming he's still around to see it, the Bay of Pigs will go down in history as Fidel Castro's Waterloo, Mr. President. I can promise you that."

Kennedy had favored Dulles with a wintry smile. "You and Bissell have countersigned the check, Allen."

McGeorge Bundy had caught the President's eye and had gestured imperceptibly with his head in Swett's direction. Kennedy had gotten the message and had changed the subject. "Anyone here had a chance to read the Heller novel, Catch-22? I think it may be the best damn book to come out of the war. He has this character named Yossarian who decides to live forever or die in the attempt."

Speeding away from the White House in the limousine, Swett sat back and lit up the fat cigar that Kennedy had slipped into his breast pocket after the lunch. He had noticed Bundy warning the President off the subject of Cuba. Even without the gesture, Swett would have understood he had overheard things that were not common knowledge in the nations capitol; his own son-in-law, for Christ's sake, worked for the CIA and still didn't have the foggiest idea what Bissell and Dulles were cooking up. But Swett had put two and two together: at some point in the cruelest month, April, Cubans trained and armed by the CIA would land at a place known as the Bay of Pigs. Assuming he's still around to see it! Swett chuckled into the haze of cigar smoke swirling through the back of the car. Of course! How could he have missed it? Dulles and his people would have to be horses' asses not to get rid of Castro before the fireworks started.

By golly, the people over at the Pickle Factory were many things, Swett reflected. But his son-in-law aside, they were certainly not horses' asses.

4

WASHINGTON, DC, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1961

EUGENE, WHO HAD BEEN DELIVERING LIQUOR SINCE LATE AFTERNOON, decided to go straight to Bernice's without touching base at his studio apartment over the store. He parked Max's station wagon on a side street in Georgetown, locked the doors and started down Wisconsin toward his girlfriend's. He sensed something was different as soon as he turned the corner into Whitehaven. It was nine-twenty, a time when the residential street was normally deserted. Now it seemed to crawl with activity. A man and a woman, both dressed in duffel coats, stood talking on a brownstone stoop diagonally across from Bernice's building; from a distance they could have been lovers making up after a quarrel. A middle-aged man Eugene had never seen before in all the years he'd been sleeping with Bernice was walking a dog he'd never seen before either. Further along, Eugene passed a white panel truck with "Slater & Slater Radio-TV" printed on its side parked in front of a fire hydrant. Why would the Messrs. Slater leave their vehicle in front of a hydrant for the entire night when there were parking spaces to be had on the side streets off Wisconsin? Up ahead, near the intersection with 37th Street, he spotted a gray four-door Ford backed into a driveway; the area was well-lit and Eugene could make out two figures in the front seat and a long antenna protruding from the rear bumper. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bay windows of Bernice's third-floor walkup across the street. They were awash with light, which was curious; when Bernice was expecting him she made a fetish of switching off the electric lights and illuminating the room with candles.

Eugene could hear his own footsteps echoing in the wintry night as he made his way along Whitehaven. With an effort he mastered the riot of panic rising to his gorge. Bits and pieces of basic training at the First Chief Directorate's compound in the woods at Balashikha came back to him: innocent people act innocently, which was to say they didn't break into a sprint at the first whiff of peril. It was lucky he'd taken the precaution of parking the car before he got to Whitehaven; if the FBI had staked out Bernice's apartment, they would surely be looking for him to arrive in Max's station wagon. He was lucky, too, to be walking down the wrong side of the street—it would raise doubts in their minds. They would be wary of stopping the wrong person for fear the right person might round the corner, spot the stakeout and be frightened off. Willing himself to remain calm, Eugene pulled his woolen cap down across his forehead, buried his chin in his turned-up collar and continued on his way—past the man walking the dog, past Bernice's bay windows, past the two lovers making up after a quarrel, past the four-door Ford with the two men in the front seat and the whip antenna on the back. He could feel the eyes of the men in the Ford following him down the street; he thought he heard the quick burst of static a radio produces when you switch it on. At the corner he turned right and made his way down 37th. Where it met Calvert, he walked back up Wisconsin until he came to the People's Drugstore that he and Bernice often went to when they became famished after making love.