TWENTY-FIVE
I opened the briefcase, fired up the walkie-talkie, and threw the Bible to Horst. “Now would be a good time to learn how to pray,” I said.
Flipping the television set on, I pulled a chair up to the screen and waited for it to warm up. A picture finally emerged of JFK and a couple dozen dignitaries standing on a temporary platform that looked like something they’d erect in Dodge City for a public hanging. The structure was intended to let the president and his entourage look out over the wall into East Berlin, but they weren’t seeing much since the authorities on the other side had overnight hung giant banners with anti-Western propaganda from the Brandenburg Gate, effectively blocking the view.
Dialing around until I found a channel without a signal, I raised the volume of the static noise, then leaned into the speaker and hit the send button on the radio.
“Babysitter, checking in…” I said, doing my best to re-create Chase’s macho monotone. “Do you read me? … Over.” I released the button and waited.
“This is Big Daddy. …” Henry Fisher’s voice came back loud and clear. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I wasn’t surprised. Henry was the logical choice for Control. “You’re late, Babysitter,” he said. “What’s the problem? … Over.”
I put the mouthpiece directly in front of the television’s speaker and pressed send without saying anything.
“I’m getting a lot of interference here, Babysitter. Are you on line? … Over.”
“It’s the goddamn radio….” I said. “What’d you do, get a deal from the Japs? … Over.”
“What’s your location? … Over.” I was afraid he was going to ask that question. Since it was reasonable to assume that the hotel had a designation, and I didn’t know it, I stalled.
“Didn’t get that…” I said. “Can you repeat? … Over.”
“Are—you—at—home? … Over,” he said slowly, enunciating each word and handing me the hotel’s designation. It wasn’t a mistake on his part. Unlike my “Babysitter” designation, which was an internal security precaution, location designations were a safeguard against eavesdroppers, which you had to assume were out there in spite of the secure channels.
“Yeah, yeah … I’m at home….” I confirmed. “Over.”
“How’s the kid? … Over.”
“I gave him his medication and he’s fast asleep … Over.”
“Okay, stand by, Babysitter. … Over and out.”
I sat back in the chair and exhaled a lungful of air. The fact that we’d made it that far was as close to miraculous as it gets, at least in my experience.
“What shall we do now?” Horst asked.
“We wait,” I answered.
Horst tried to sit still, flipped quickly through the Welcome to West Berlin magazine, then threw it aside and flitted around the room, ready to explode. He started to say something, but I guess my look told him I wasn’t interested in conversation.
I didn’t mind that Fisher was running Control. In fact, it could be a bonus—at least I knew what I was dealing with. Henry was the kind of guy who would see aborting a mission as a personal failure, so he’d filter his risk assessment, ignoring anything that didn’t stare him in the face. It was how I got away with the static-noise ploy.
Harvey was the exact opposite—he always assumed the worst. He had big ideas, but lots of guys have big ideas. Harvey’s genius lay in being able to pull them off and that was the result of his obsession with detail. Like a grand master of chess developing his game, he would’ve spent weeks, probably months, thinking this operation through, putting it together, studying it from every conceivable angle, then taking it apart again until he could see no flaws. It was why he had argued so strongly for a postponement. The last-minute change from Kovinski to me made him nervous. Without properly vetting the deviation from his carefully worked-out plan, letting all the possibilities and potential pitfalls sink in over a period of time, he couldn’t predict the problems it might create. The only solid argument he was left with was that my past with the Company might blow the cover story, even though he knew there were any number of elements that I might upset. Had he written the plan with me in mind, for instance, he probably would’ve arranged for more security than just Chase.
In all his plotting, Harvey had seen something that prevented him from placing the gunman in the same room with the patsy—originally Kovinski, now me. If I could get at that, maybe I could get at where he did place him. I was close, so damn close to spoiling these bastards’ day, but I needed to know where to find that shooter….
“Come in, Babysitter, this is Big Daddy. … Over.” The walkie-talkie crackled to life. I picked it up, raised the volume on the television, and signed on.
“Babysitter here … Over.”
“We’d like to get some photos, Babysitter. …” Fisher said. “Go ahead and draw the curtains. … The window should already be open. … Put the kid in front of it and I’ll let you know when we’ve got what we need. … And keep out of sight. … Over.”
Horst was already standing beside the window, the drawstring clenched in his fist. “Not yet,” I said, getting into position behind the drapes.
“Okay …” I put my zombie face on again. “Open….”
Horst pulled the curtain, revealing a crowd of somewhere close to a million people jammed into the plaza below me. I felt like the pope standing there in the window, except that the faithful were facing the wrong way. All eyes were focused on the stage that had been set up in front of city hall and the star-spangled pulpit where Kennedy would stand in less than two hours, a twelve-foot-high American flag below him, a massive red, white, and blue ribbon spanning the width of the platform behind him.
Horst and I had entered the hotel through a back door, so it was my first look at Rudolf-Wilde Platz and it was a hell of a scene—a sea of faces filled the long rectangular space, spilling out into the adjoining streets in all directions as far as I could see. The more dedicated had claimed a spot near the stage by staying overnight in tents and sleeping bags; others were spending hours up a tree to ensure their view.
The Victoria, five stories high and L-shaped, was one of several buildings overlooking the plaza from the west side of the square. The facade curved ninety degrees around the corner of a narrow street that fed into the plaza. The southern half of the building, where we were, was parallel to city hall and directly across from the speaker’s dais, about a hundred and twenty yards away. Well within the bull’s-eye range of the Tokarev in the hands of a good marksman. Combined with a second gun placed in the apartment complex on the opposite side of the narrow road, there would be a forty-five-degree convergence of fire onto President Kennedy’s head.
Ideally, you’d want your third gunman firing at the target from ground level. Given that almost every square foot of the area was filled with spectators, it would be tough to conceal the third man, but I noticed a patch of trees to my left that was unique in that it hadn’t been invaded by spectators. I couldn’t see who was securing the area, but there was an ambulance parked next to it with a clear path through the crowd. A perfect setup for escape and weapons disposal.
“Babysitter, this is Big Daddy. … Over.” I could feel Horst freeze up. “Hello, Babysitter … Over.”
“What shall I do?” Horst asked urgently.
“This is Big Daddy, Babysitter. Please acknowledge. … Over,” Fisher said impatiently.
“Answer it,” I said, trying not to move my lips.
“How can I? He will know! He will hear my accent!”
“Do Bogie,” I said.
“Babysitter, are you receiving?! … Over!” Fisher’s blood pressure was on the rise.
“What do you mean, do Bogie?” Horst said, closing in on panic. “I’m not an actor!”
“You are now….” I said. Horst drew a breath, picked up the radio, and leaned into the television speaker.
“I hear ya, Big Daddy. … Go ahead. … Over.” He sounded more like John Wayne than Bogart, but it seemed to do the trick. I was starting to believe in God.
“We’re not seeing the kid’s face too well, Babysitter,” Fisher said. “Push him up a little closer to the window … so he catches the light. … Over.”
I stepped forward.
“How is that? … Over,” Horst said into the radio. I wanted to tell him to keep quiet, but I was pretty sure they’d have a telephoto lens on me now and might see me move my lips. I’d been half-right about the photographs anyway. They were getting me on film standing at the window—I just couldn’t see why Harvey wouldn’t want a shot of the rifle hanging out of it at the crucial moment.
There was a slight delay before Fisher came back on the line. “Okay, Babysitter … That’s fine.” Then another voice, in the background, came on over the open mike. I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like Harvey King himself:
“Who’s that on the roof?” he said.
“One of ours, I think …” Fisher answered.
“Don’t f*cking think!” the voice barked. “Find out and get it cleared! I don’t want anybody on that roof until—!” Then Fisher remembered to take his finger off the send button.
Until what?! … Until the shooter turns up? … Was Harvey going to place the sniper on the roof above my window? … Why? … What advantage was there?
Did he think it would be a better escape route? Maybe he didn’t want to risk the possibility that the gunman would get caught up in the hallway “shoot-out” that was supposed to leave me dead. That made some sense. Witnesses would appear as soon as they heard shots in the hallway. Since they would be well aware of exactly how much time had passed between the president being hit and the Secret Service man gunning me down, the two events would have to happen within, say, thirty seconds of each other. It wasn’t enough time to ensure that the gunman would get away cleanly. If he had fired from the roof, on the other hand, he could slip out of the hotel while everyone converged on the fourth-floor hallway….
“Okay, that’s it, Babysitter….” Fisher’s voice came back online. “Put the kid back to bed and keep out of sight. … I’ll buzz you when we start the countdown. … Over and out.”
Horst pulled the curtains shut, then fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.
“This was a close shave,” he finally said.
“We’re fine,” I said. “But I’d work on that Bogart impression if I were you.”
“What is the meaning of dow-bed?” Horst asked a few minutes later. He was pacing again, this time with his nose in the Bible.
“What?”
“D-a-u-b-e-d,” he spelled, then sounded it out. “Dow-bed.”
“Daubed,” I corrected him.
“What is the meaning?”
“Well …” I started to say, but came up short. “What’s the context?”
“Context?”
“Read the whole sentence.”
“’They have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar.’ Also ‘untempered mortar’ I don’t understand.”
“To daub is to plaster, I think, and untempered mortar … I guess that’s some kind of soft cement.” Horst shrugged and went back to his walking and reading.
“Is that the Ezekiel passage?” I asked after a while, my curiosity getting the better of me. He displayed the page with “Babysitter” written across it.
“Let’s hear the rest,” I said.
“From the beginning?”
“From what you just read me.”
“Okay,” he said. “It’s going like this: ‘They have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar.’ “He gave me a knowing look before continuing:” ‘Say unto them that it shall fall: there shall be an overflowing shower; and yea, O great hailstones shall fall and a stormy wind shall rend it.’ Rend it?” he asked.
“Blow it up,” I said. Horst nodded and continued.
“’Therefore thus saith the Lord God; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great hailstones in my fury to consume it. … So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall, and ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am the LORD. … Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that have daubed it with untempered mortar, and will say unto you, The wall is no more, neither they that daubed it;… to wit, the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and which see visions of peace for her, and there is no peace, saith the Lord GOD.’”