The Tears of Autumn (33 page)

“These blacks of mine sometimes eat their prisoners,” Ruiz said.

“So I understand.”

Ruiz drank from his canteen cup, his eyes wide open and bright over its rim. “We began to talk about Do Minh Kha and his people this afternoon,” he said.

“I remember.”

“I’ve never heard of you, Charron. Perhaps that should reassure me. You know Do well, do you?

“Well enough. I explained the relationship to you.”

Ruiz looked at the ceiling, swirled the vodka in his cup, fixed his eyes on Christopher; his speech was blurred, and he struggled to enunciate the foreign language he was speaking. He began a sentence in Spanish, stopped himself, and rephrased it in French.

“They have a good revolution, the Vietnamese,” he said. “Like ours—the same enemy, the same devotion, the same practicality.”

Christopher permitted a grin to cover his face, as if he knew a joke too delicious to conceal.

“Do you know Benshikov?” he asked.

“He was in Havana for two years.”

“After that, in Hanoi. Benshikov can be pompous. He wanted to reorganize the North Vietnamese service on KGB lines. Do told Benshikov that the Soviet service was too bureaucratic to have imagination. Do said you Cubans had the best service in the world, because your revolution is still young enough to feel hunger and rage.”

Ruiz nodded, accepting the compliment. “Do told me that story, too,” he said.

Christopher went on speaking, as if prolonging the joke. “It was Benshikov who suggested a professional rifleman for Dallas, you know. Do wouldn’t tell him the details, just that he wanted an assassin.”

Ruiz read the label on the empty vodka bottle.

“Truthfully, at the time, I thought they had chosen the wrong man—not you, the assassin,” Christopher said. “He was so unstable.”

Ruiz seized the bottle by the neck and tapped on the table with it; outside, some of Nsango’s men were drumming and Ruiz tried to reproduce the rhythm, which was almost as complicated as speech.

“Oswald was insane,” he said. “But perhaps that’s what was needed.”

Christopher lifted his eyebrows. “Did you imagine he could succeed?” he asked.

“No. That’s why I was permitted by my own people to go ahead with the contact. They regarded it as a harmless favor to the Vietnamese—a credit for the future when we might want something from them. It wasn’t a high-level decision. I can’t imagine who had the balls to pass the word to Fidel after Oswald actually shot Kennedy. Naturally the Americans suspected us. A lot of people in Havana must have been very, very nervous.”

“Your people had no misgivings?”

Ruiz waved a hand. “It’s the old rule—the result justified whatever risk there might be. They thought even an unsuccessful attempt to kill Kennedy would have an important propaganda effect. To show he wasn’t safe in his own country.”

“Yes, but Oswald himself was a risk. I don’t know how you avoided terrible handling problems.”

“I handled Oswald very little, Charron. The contact was peculiar. He was such an outsider, such a clown. Our people in Mexico wouldn’t let me take him to a safe house, even. I spoke to him for perhaps an hour, in the Alameda, between planes.”

“But it was you who brought him to Mexico.”

“Yes, and I who suggested him to Do Minh Kha. I had his dossier with me in Hanoi, it came out to me in the pouch with a lot of other low-level stuff. One of our agents in New Orleans had assessed Oswald. He was trying to draw our attention there with that ridiculous thing of passing out pro-Castro leaflets on the street. We approached him. He offered to train and lead freedom fighters in Latin America. We pretended interest. Our man told him he’d have no problem getting a transit visa for the USSR at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City. The idea was that he’d stay in Havana, but the FBI and the CIA and all the others Oswald thought were watching him would think he’d redefected to Russia. Are you following?”

“Yes.”

“Then you see the pattern. Oswald had a tremendous fight with our consul in Mexico City, a man named Azque, when he wouldn’t issue the visa with no questions asked. Azque thought he was rabid.”

“Yes, I’d heard that. He also got into a sweat with the people at the Soviet embassy. They reported it to Center.”

“Did he? I’m glad I didn’t know that. The Russians didn’t want any part of him, naturally. No one did, poor fool.”

“How did you make contact?”

“Telephone. We’d given him a time schedule for the call and a recognition code. We told him to stay at the Comercio, it’s a dump. He hung about for two or three days and I had him surveilled. He was clean. So I called him up. He made the meeting in the park that same evening without any hesitation, precisely on time, hair all combed.”

“I hope you didn’t wear your uniform.”

“No—suit, tie, briefcase. I let him see a pistol under my coat. I gave him no identification. I don’t know what he thought I was. I played it very serious.”

“Like a Russian?”

“He may have thought that. I told him nothing. He made a point of not asking.” Ruiz made a comical face. “He wanted to look like a professional. He was very eager to be treated with respect. I obliged.”

“How did you lay the mission on him?”

“You have to understand I never thought he’d go through with it. I just gave it to him cold: when Kennedy is in Dallas in the last week of November, kill him. Use a rifle. Wear gloves. Abandon the weapon and walk away.”

“How did he react?”

“He was calm, casual. When I told him he’d change history he jumped a little and gave me a funny look, as if I’d touched him in the wrong place.”

Ruiz was enjoying his anecdote. He was smiling now and searching Christopher’s face for reaction.

“I mentioned plastic surgery, a new identity, a career of doing the same sort of thing in the future,” Ruiz said. “Amateurs really believe such things are possible.”

“And you promised to get him out after the shooting?”

“Of course. He wasn’t the kind who wanted to die. He was all fantasy. He imagined himself in a Socialist country, famous with all the secret people. It was a matter of letting him smell the life he’d always wanted. Respect, trust—his greatness acknowledged.”

“Weren’t you afraid he’d panic when you didn’t show up?”

“Once again, I had no idea he’d succeed. I thought he might try and be killed by the security forces. It was logical that that should happen.”

“Even failing, he might have talked.”

“Never. He wasn’t the type. We would have broken him, or the Russians. But not the Americans. It would have been a federal case. The FBI doesn’t torture people. In any case, they would have seen he was crazy. If he’d mentioned me, the FBI would have thought I was another of his fantasies.”

“You thought all that out at the time?”

“Frankly, no. But afterward it was plain. It was Oswald who chose the meeting place for after the assassination—that movie house. The Texas Theater? He said it would be easy for me to remember. A movie house. That was the amateur.”

“He wanted you to meet him there?”

“Oh, yes. He became very brisk—told me what sort of car to get for the escape, recommended a used-car dealer, drew a map of the routes south. He said we’d be across the border into Mexico before the American police recovered from the shock. I agreed with everything, as if he were a genius.”

“Money?”

“I didn’t offer him any—it would have been fatal. He wanted to prove his value. The operation cost nothing. He even had his own rifle and ammunition.”

“He must have wanted communications with you.”

“Certainly. I told him to rent a post office box at the Terminal Annex in Dallas when he was ready to go, and send me its number. I gave him an accommodation address in Mexico.”

“Did he?”

Ruiz laughed. “Yes. He wrote the number of the box on a piece of paper and circled the two middle digits. The number was 6225. I realized after the assassination that 22 was the day in November on which he intended to kill Kennedy. And so he did.”

“That must have been happenstance, the box number.”

“Maybe. When I saw Oswald in Mexico City, he had a clipping from a Dallas newspaper with him, saying that Kennedy would be in Dallas on November 21 and 22. Those were the dates the Vietnamese had chosen—Do Minh Kha gets the American papers too. Oswald just wanted to tell me which day, so I’d be there to arrange his getaway. You know what these fools are like—they imagine a great secret apparatus exists, able to do anything. It’s a good thing for us that they do believe it.”

“If he’d already clipped the story, he might have gone ahead with the shooting anyway.”

“It’s possible,” Ruiz said. “He’d had the idea for a long time. All I did was give him a rationale. After he talked to me, he was doing it for the revolution, entering history. I think that would have been important to him—to have his act known by the men in the apparatus. That way, he wasn’t just a cheap little nut, he was the avenger of the masses.”

“You’re a good psychologist, Manuel.”

“Fair. Oswald was easy material.”

Ruiz rose from his chair and pulled his sweat-soaked shirt away from his body. He reached under the table and brought out a bottle of beer. When he struck off the cap, placing its lip against the edge of the table and striking downward with the heel of his hand, the beer spurted. Ruiz put the neck in his mouth to prevent waste, then filled Christopher’s cup. It was a bitter local brand, heavily carbonated. Ruiz belched and shook his head rapidly in apology.

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Christopher said. “Oswald
did
enter history, but he never had any idea who he was killing for, did he?”

“Not a clue. That was the beauty of it. I wondered at the time, just as you did, why Do had let me give him this pathetic queer, why he imagined this man would have the balls to do it. Do had it planned down to the day and the hour and the exact intersection of streets. He seemed to think the plan was so foolproof that any fool could fire the rifle. It goes to show you how clever these Vietnamese are, and how we underestimate them. The Americans are going to learn a lot over there.”

Christopher lifted his canteen cup. “I hope so,” he said.

Ruiz had told his story with nonchalance. Now his face collapsed into an expression of comical urgency. He slammed the beer bottle on the tabletop and rushed out of the hut. Christopher followed and saw Ruiz, tearing at his belt, running toward the bamboo screen that hid the latrine. He heard the Cuban’s bowels open in a loud burst of gas and liquid. Ruiz groaned and retched, squatting astride the ditch with his arms wrapped around his own body.

Christopher, a pace behind the crouching man, drew the .22 pistol from his belt and fired two rounds of birdshot into the base of Ruiz’s neck; the pistol’s weak report could barely be heard above the drums. Ruiz emitted a groan, full of breath as if he had been kicked in the stomach, and fell forward into the ditch.

A mile down the path, Christopher found Nsango sitting in the Jeep, listening to the drums.

“The Cubans may follow,” Christopher said. “Manuel won’t be good for much when he wakes up, but he’ll be able to send the others.”

“The drums will tell me,” Nsango said, “the savage heartbeat of the Congo.”

His teeth shone in the darkness. He held up a finger for silence and turned on the headlights. Behind them in the camp, the drums stopped. They heard four long bursts of fire from the Kalashnikovs. After each burst, Nsango held up another finger.

“Only Manuel is left,” he said. “Send me a postcard, Paul, when he’s no longer needed.”

1

When Christopher arrived at Patchen’s house on M Street, the others were already there. Foley still wore a black tie, but he had taken off his PT-109 tie clasp. He spoke in a louder voice and his handshake was rougher. He had begun to take on some of the mannerisms of the new President, but he hadn’t yet perfected the style. Foley was between personalities; though his language was stronger, he was pale and less alert than he had been. It was apparent that he counted for less in the White House. He deferred to another man, a stranger to Christopher, who stood with his back to a fire of birch logs in Patchen’s fireplace. Patchen introduced Christopher.

“J. D. Trumbull,” said the man. Trumbull had a disarming smile and a chuckling Texas accent. He wore Western boots and a brown suit, beautifully tailored but unpressed, apparently, since the day it was bought. When Trumbull shook hands, he grasped Christopher’s forearm with his other hand and squeezed.

“Old David tells us you’ve been through one hell of a lot in the last few weeks,” Trumbull said. “We appreciate it.”

When Trumbull said “we” he managed to sketch a likeness of Lyndon Johnson in the empty air over his shoulder. Christopher looked into the man’s ruddy, open face for an instant before stepping backward to free his arm.

Patchen filled four glasses with ice, poured scotch into them, and passed them around. “I don’t have any soda,” he said.

“This’s just fine,” Trumbull said. “Tastes better but it’s worse for you.” Trumbull sipped his whiskey and turned his eyes to Patchen. “Now,” he said.

“I’ll assume Dennis has briefed you on the background to Christopher’s report,” Patchen said.