He'd lived with a shifting population of rogue commandos in a boardinghouse on Southwest Fourth Street in Miami. They spent weeks at a time training in the mangrove swamps and went on forays along the Cuban coast in a thirty-five-foot launch, mainly to land agents and shoot at silhouettes. Otherwise they stayed close to the clapboard house, cleaning submachine guns in the backyard. Judo instructors, tugboat captains, homeless Cubans, ex-paratroopers like Wayne, mercenaries from wars nobody heard of, in West Africa or Malay. They were like guys straight out of Wayne's favorite movie, Seven Samurai, warriors without masters, willing to band together to save a village from marauders, to win back a country, only to see themselves betrayed in the end. First it was Navy jets making reconnaissance runs over No Name Key, snapping little pix of the muddy boys. Next it was five Interpen commandos picked up for vagrancy, courtesy of the Dade County sheriff. Then U.S. customs officers pounced, arresting a dozen men, including Wayne Elko in battle gear and a lampblacked face, just as they were setting out for Cuba in the twin-engine launch.
JFK had made his deal with the Soviets to leave Castro alone. Incredible. The same man Wayne would have voted for if he'd gotten around to registering. He believed in country, loyalty, mountains and streams. They were all tied together.
He found a telephone and made a collect call to the New Orleans number T. J. Mackey had given him about a year earlier. He told the woman at the other end he wished to speak to a Mr. Guy Banister.
"This is Wayne Elko calling. It seems like I have washed up in Denver, Colorado, tell T-Jay, and I am looking for a chance at some employment."
Win Everett was in his basement at home, hunched over the worktable. His tools and materials were set before him, mainly household things, small and cheap-cutting instruments, acetate overlays, glues and pastes, a soft eraser, a travel iron.
He felt marvelously alert, sure of himself, putting together a man with scissors and tape.
His gunman would emerge and vanish in a maze of false names. Investigators would find an application for a post-office box; a certificate of service, U.S. Marine Corps; a Social Security card; a passport application; a driver's license; a stolen credit card and half a dozen other documents-in two or three different names, each leading to a trail that would end at the Cuban Intelligence Directorate.
He worked on a Diners Club card, removing the ink on the raised letters with a Q-tip doused in polyester resin. A radio on a shelf played soothing music. He pressed the card against the warm iron, heating it slowly to flatten the letters. Then he used a razor blade to level the remaining bumps and juts. He would eventually reheat the card and stamp a new name and number on its face with an addressograph plate.
He'd picked up a certain amount of sleazy tradecraft in his early years as an operations officer. Before that he'd taught in a series of small liberal-arts colleges in the Midwest, places like Franklin, in Indiana, where a perceptive colleague, affiliated somehow or other with CIA, recruited him for covert training. The idea seemed immediately right, a possible answer to the restlessness he'd felt working through his system, a sense that he needed to risk something important, challenge his moral complacencies, before he could see himself complete. Soon he was taking handy instruction in Flaps amp; Seals, or how to read other people's mail without letting them know about it, and remembering now and then those sleepy afternoons at little Franklin College. After some years in Havana and Central America, including duty as chief of station in Guatemala City, he was one of several men assigned to coordinate the training of a Cuban exile brigade. He was in a constant hurry after that. Underwater demolition in Puerto Rico and North Carolina, paratroop maneuvers outside Phoenix, teams to organize in Nicaragua, Miami, Key West.
He felt sharp now, better than he'd felt in some time, on top of things, alert.
The young man's address book would be next. A major project.
Once he had a handwriting sample, Win would scratch onto those miniature pages enough trails, false trails, swarming life, lingering mystery, enough real and fabricated people to occupy investigators for months to come.
He unscrewed the top of the Elmer's Glue-All. He used his X-Acto knife to cut a new signature strip from a sheet of opaque paper. He checked the length and width of the strip against the bare space on the back of the credit card. Then he dribbled an even stream of glue over the paper and pressed it lightly on the card. He listened to the radio while the glue dried.
He was in a constant hurry then. Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone. Trax Base in Guatemala. Things were quieter now. He had time to turn the pages of all the books he'd been meaning to read.
After the address book came the false names. He looked forward to coming up with names. He removed excess glue from the back of the card with one of Suzanne's school erasers. Then he turned off the radio, turned off the light, climbed the old plank stairs.
His gunman would appear behind a strip of scenic gauze. You have to leave them with coincidence, lingering mystery. This is what makes it real.
He checked the front door. The days came and went. Bedtime again. Always bedtime now. He went around turning off lights, checked the back door, checked to see that the oven was off. This meant all was well.
Someday this operation would be studied at the highest levels of intelligence in Langley and the Pentagon.
He turned off the kitchen light. He began to climb the stairs, felt compelled to double-check the oven, although he was certain it was off. Astonish them. Create coincidence so bizarre they have to believe it. Create a loneliness that beats with violent desire. This kind of man. An arrest, a false name, a stolen credit card. Stalking a victim can be a way of organizing one's loneliness, making a network out of it, a fabric of connections. Desperate men give their solitude a purpose and a destiny.
The oven was off. He made an effort to register this fact. Then he went upstairs, hearing soft music on the bedroom radio.
This kind of man. A self-watcher, a man who lives in random space. If the world is where we hide from ourselves, what do we do when the world is no longer accessible? We invent a false name, invent a destiny, purchase a firearm through the mail.
Lancer is going to Honolulu.
At one level he operated well. He felt alert, marvelously sharp, very much on top of things. The address book was next. We want a spectacular miss.
A voice on KDNT said that an eight-nation committee of the Organization of American States has charged Cuba with promoting Marxist subversion in our hemisphere. The island is a training center for agents. The government has begun a new phase of encouraging violence and unrest in Latin America.
He didn't need these reminders. He didn't need announcers telling him what Cuba had become. This was a silent struggle. He carried a silent rage and determination. He didn't want company. The more people who believed as he did, the less pure his anger. The country was noisy with fools who demeaned his anger.
He put on his pajamas. He seemed to be in pajamas all the time now. The day wasn't half done and it was time to go to bed again. Mary Frances was asleep. He switched off the radio, switched off the lamp. He spoke inwardly to whatever force was out there, whatever power ruled the sky, the endless hydrogen spirals, the region of all night, all souls. He said simply, Please let me sleep but not dream.