“It wasn’t as cloak-and-dagger as it sounds. The agency ran its own anti-Castro training camps prior to the Bay of Pigs. As for the private camps, the agency didn’t want to have to rely on what the bosses like Marcello and Trafficante told them. So they paid some vets to hire on as instructors. To Frank Knox, that just meant two paychecks instead of one. All he had to do was give his CIA contact a call now and then and update him on progress in the camp.”
“Would Marcello have known Knox was doing that?”
“No. Frank wasn’t stupid. The point is, we discounted Frank and Snake Knox as suspects in the JFK assassination years ago. We figured them for racist rednecks who’d killed a lot of black people, but not much more. Even after we came to suspect Marcello, we didn’t see Frank as a soldier or employee of his, because in theory he’d been informing on Marcello to the CIA.”
“They didn’t know about the Brody Royal connection,” Kaiser explains. “Royal was the cutout between Marcello and the Knoxes in later years. But once Glenn Morehouse exposed that connection, everything clicked into place. Marcello’s plan to lure RFK here in ’68 and use the Eagles to kill him was like a billboard pointing back at 1963.”
“When I saw that medical excuse,” Stone intones, “I knew Frank had done it.”
“This is bullshit,” I insist. “There’s no way my father knowingly took part in a criminal conspiracy, much less a presidential assassination. No way in hell.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Stone says softly.
Everyone in this room knows my father probably withheld critical knowledge about the murders of Albert Norris and Dr. Leland Robb for nearly forty years. But that doesn’t change my conviction.
“Is this all you’ve got?”
Kaiser starts to say something, but Stone stops him. “The thing is, Penn, even if Tom didn’t knowingly assist Frank Knox in wrongdoing, he may know things of critical importance. He just might not know he knows them.”
This is slightly more palatable, but I can’t tell whether Stone really believes it.
“In any case,” says the old agent, “I’m certain that one or more surviving Double Eagles know what Frank Knox did in 1963—most likely his brother, Snake. Snake might even have helped Frank bring off the assassination. Even if he didn’t, he may well know the truth about your father and that medical excuse.”
“Where was Snake on November twenty-second?”
“We don’t know. Some people have told us he was at work, but we can’t verify that. Nevertheless,” Stone says, his voice wearing away my resistance like a steady flow of water, “now you can see why all the Double Eagles must be handled with the utmost care.”
In my mind’s eye I see Walker Dennis, the ex–baseball player and newly appointed sheriff, clumsily trying to break Snake Knox in a CPSO interrogation room. The prospect makes me light-headed.
“Now you’re getting it?” says Kaiser.
Shit.
CHAPTER 35
AS CAITLIN COASTED along the great concrete crescent before Quentin’s Tudor mansion, she saw faint light glowing at the edges of one of the window blinds on the side of the house. She wished she had some way to warn Tom that she was no threat to him, but honking the horn might alert neighbors she couldn’t see. As she got out of her car, she realized that it had been four days since she’d seen Penn’s father. Last Sunday, she and Penn had taken Annie over to eat a late dinner. Peggy had pulled out all the stops and cooked one of her classic southern feasts, including “Ruby’s Fried Chicken.” Now, only four days later, the world in which such a simple domestic scene could occur had been blown apart by the actions of the family patriarch, whom she would confront in less than a minute. Trying to stay calm, she walked around the house to a side door and knocked three times, as normally as she could.
Nothing happened.
She knocked again, this time giving the child’s version of a “secret knock.”
Putting her ear to the door, she was surprised to hear a shuffling sound behind it. Then a woman’s voice said, “Who is it?”
“Melba, it’s Caitlin Masters,” she said loudly. “I’m alone.”
Several seconds of silence followed. Then she heard a dead bolt slide back, and the door opened to reveal Tom Cage standing in the crack with a pistol pointed through it. Caitlin could see Melba’s tall form in the foyer behind him.
“Jesus Christ!” Tom gasped. “How did you find me?”
He looked back at Melba to see whether she had betrayed him.
“I had an employee following Melba. Shouldn’t we get inside before some FBI helicopter sees the light?”
Tom grunted and backed out of the gap so she could pass through. When she had, he closed the door and led her into a contemporary kitchen area she recognized from a party photograph she had seen at Tom and Peggy’s house. Melba stood by the counter, looking wary.
“Is Penn with you?” Tom asked anxiously.
“No.”
“Where is he?”
Caitlin saw nothing to be gained by mentioning Dwight Stone and the FBI at this point. “He’s with Peggy and Annie, somewhere safe. He’s sleeping.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know myself. For safety’s sake.”
Tom processed this, then nodded. “Good thinking.” He set the pistol on the counter. “Why didn’t you tell him you’d found me?”
“At first I wasn’t positive that I had.”
“And now?”
“I want to hear what you have to say. I guess Melba and I have a lot in common.”
The nurse gave Caitlin a sidelong look.
“Tom, if I can find you, the bad guys can, too.”
“You’re right,” he said, looking preoccupied. “I need to move as soon as Walt gets back.”
“Have you heard anything from him? Has he made any progress?”
Tom glanced at Melba again. “He’s made some, but he can’t move right now.”
“Well, I don’t think Colonel Griffith Mackiever can do much to help you. He’ll be lucky to save himself. He’s about to be forced to resign over a scandal that was probably manufactured by Forrest Knox.”
In the silence that followed this statement, she realized that the towel over Tom’s left shoulder concealed a broad wrapping of gauze bandages. “How bad is your wound?”