But you are making an even greater mistake when you withhold your signature, approving the annual disbursement of operational funds from the banking facility in Lichtenstein. That two signatures should be required for such disbursements is, as you well know, an anachronism dating back to when the Institute and Clinic were separate entities.
That you should now take advantage of this anomaly to press your own agenda is disgraceful. And not just disgracefuclass="underline" it is an attack, not only upon the Institute, but on myself. I beg you to reconsider.
McBride turned to Adrienne, who was reading over his shoulder, having already finished the earlier letter, inspiring the one in his hand. “Mamie was right,” he told her.
“About what?” She was still reading.
“The money. Crane had some kind of lock on it. And he was squeezing them.” He let her continue to read until she looked up at him, signaling that she was done. McBride didn’t say anything, but just sat there, looking distracted. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“My fellowship,” he told her. “I’m thinking the whole thing was a sham.”
“Tell me again what—”
“I was studying bush therapies. That’s what it amounted to. Everything from dance frenzies to speaking in tongues.”
“So? I don’t see how any of that would help the program.”
“I do. That’s what it was all about: altered states of consciousness. Drugs, hypnosis, trance states. And not only that, I was encouraged to write about ‘Third World Messiahs’ and ‘mass conversion.’ And I did. I reported on a charismatic faith healer in Brazil, a defrocked priest in Salvador who was said to work miracles, and a Pentecostal politician in… I think it was Belize.”
“So?”
“Someone whacked the faith healer. Shot him onstage when he was up to his elbows in cancer and chicken guts. The newspapers said his killer was nuts.”
“And you think… ?”
“I don’t know what to think,” McBride replied. The two of them sat back on the couch, listening to the rain thrashing against the windows. After a while, he leaned forward and began to put Crane’s papers back in the attaché case. Adrienne got up, and crossed the room to the windows. Looked out.
“It’s letting up,” she said.
McBride nodded, then lingered for a moment over a thick manila envelope—the one with the clippings. In the upper right-hand corner was a notation in what McBride recognized as Crane’s hand: First Reports.
Opening the envelope, he dumped the contents on the table and began to sort through them. It went quickly, at first, then more slowly. Then quickly again. They were newspaper articles—a few of them quite long, some short, most brittle and yellowing with age. There were obituaries of obscure personalities in dozens of countries, and long dispatches about the violent deaths of prominent people throughout the world. Dateline: Rwanda—
Missing?
McBride went through the articles, one by one. Finally, he looked up at Adrienne and asked, “Did you read these?”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”
“These clips.”
There was something in his voice that got her complete attention. “No,” she said, turning to face him. “They’re newspaper clips is all. Why?”
He didn’t answer, at first—just shook his head in disbelief. Then he raised his eyes to hers and said, “I think we just found the Institute’s hit list.”
They copied the names—and there were a lot of names—onto a page of the legal pad, then tore it off and said their good-byes to Mamie. She gave Adrienne a big hug, and asked, with a coy smile, “Did you find your letters, dear?”
Adrienne shook her head. “No,” she told her, and struck with guilt at the woman’s kindness, added, “You know, Mamie, there never were any letters, really. That was just—”
Mamie smiled. “I know,” she said, and squeezed the younger woman’s hand. “But don’t tell me any more. I know what Cal’s friends were like. Just promise me that when you come this way again, you’ll stay for lunch. Is that a deal?”
They shook on it.
Half an hour later, Adrienne and McBride were on Longboat Key, sitting on the veranda of a conch house restaurant that specialized in “Floribbean cuisine.” The air was heavy with the aromas of charcoal steaks, olive oil, and old money. Ceiling fans turned overhead, but only barely. The sign on the door read CA D’EUSTACE.
They ate by candlelight—fresh pompano, washed down with a bottle of cold Sancerre. By then, the rain had stopped, and the air was clear, fresh, and cool. Nearby, they could hear the surf, murmuring in the darkness.
“I don’t know half these names,” Adrienne said, looking at the list. “I mean, who’s this first one: Forrestal?”
“I think he was… what? The first Secretary of Defense. Had some kind of psychotic break—thought people were after him.”
“And what happened to him?” Adrienne asked.
“Fell out a window at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Top floor. They named an aircraft carrier after him.”
Adrienne grimaced. “And Lin Biao?”
“Chinese guy,” McBride said.
“That would have been my guess, too,” she told him.
He took the sarcasm in stride. “It’s not a guess. I know this. He was Mao’s second in command. Very bad man. Died in a plane crash.”
She was impressed. “I know the next one,” Adrienne said. “Faisal. He was a Saudi prince, or something.”
“King,” McBride corrected. “He organized the Arab oil embargo. Nephew shot him in a receiving line. I remember reading about it: the king was standing there, waiting to be kissed on the nose—”
“What!?”
“Local custom. Anyway, his nephew waits his turn and, when it comes, he passes up the kiss and shoots him in the head. Instead.” McBride paused, remembering. “The kid was a student at San Francisco State and, after the murder, everyone said he was out of his mind—even the Saudis. Then they realized they couldn’t execute him if he was crazy. So they changed their minds, decided he was fine, and cut off his head.”
“How come you know so much?” she asked.
“Double major. Psych and modern history.” Reaching for the bottle of wine, he refilled their glasses.
“There are sixty or seventy names here,” she said.
McBride nodded. “One or two a year, all the way back to the beginning of the Cold War.” He glanced at the list, and pointed to a name. “That’s the guy I was telling you about. The faith healer.”
She looked at the page, where his finger rested beside an unpronounceable name.
“‘Jew-ow doo Gwee-ma-rice,’“ he said.
Adrienne tried her hand at a few of the other names. “Zia-ul-Haq. Park Chung Hee. Olaf Palme.”
McBride took up the roll call. “Wasfi Tal. Solomon Bandaranaike.”
She hesitated. “And they were all assassinated?”
“The ones I recognize—yeah! Park was the President of South Korea. His intel chief shot him at the dinner table. Palme was the Swedish prime minister. Someone blew him away as he walked out of a movie theater with his wife.”
Adrienne’s eyes moved down the list. “Some of the names are easy, but I’ve never heard of most of them,” she observed. “William Tolbert.”
“Liberia,” McBride guessed.
“Who’s this?” Adrienne asked.
McBride read the name. “Albino Luciani.” It was familiar, somehow, but… no. Luciani was one of the names he didn’t know. “We can look him up later,” he told her, and fell back in his chair. Like Adrienne, he was bewildered by what they’d found, and appalled by its magnitude. A minute passed, then two. Every so often, McBride shook his head and swore under his breath, a bitter little smile on his lips.
“It’s just a list,” she said. “It doesn’t really prove anything.”
“Right.”
“I mean, it’s just a bunch of newspaper stories. Maybe Crane was doing some kind of research project.”