Philip Kerr - The Shot

It was only later on that evening, when she came into the living room and found Goldman watching the RCA Seven o’clock News that Edith saw the stranger’s face again, and remembered the first and only other time she had seen it before. The reporter described how the man in the photograph, now identified as James Bywater Nimmo, an assistant police superintendent from Miami, and a former FBI Special Agent, had been rushed to St Lukes Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan after apparently setting himself on fire in Central Park. Several witnesses described how the man had poured gasoline on to himself before lighting a match and applying it to his soaked clothes. Despite the best efforts of doctors to save him, Nimmo had passed away at four o’clock that afternoon.

‘That’s the man,’ whispered Edith.

Goldman, who was impressed that somehow Nimmo should have got down from the ESB and travelled as far as Central Park, muttered, ‘Ognennyi Angel,’ the. Russian for Fiery Angel, which was one of Goldman’s favourite operas, by Prokofiev, and then said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’

‘I know him,’ Edith now exclaimed. ‘That’s the man who was in the lobby this morning. He was trying to deliver mail to someone who doesn’t live here. My God, Alex, they said he was from the FBI. You don’t suppose they know about us, do you?’

Goldman got up from the sofa and turned the sound down on the TV. He did not want to turn the set off. Perry Mason was starting in a few minutes, which was one of his favourite shows. And later on, there was Richard Boone, in Have Gun, Will Travel , which he also enjoyed. Goldman was not one for celebrating New Year’s Eve. It was a time that always filled him with melancholy.

Carefully, he said, ‘No, that’s not what they said, Edith. They said he was ex-FBI. Something quite different. And no, I don’t suppose they know about us at all.’

‘But he was here, Alex,’ insisted Edith, who was beginning to sound alarmed. ‘I swear it was him.’

‘Oh, I believe you. I’m quite sure that you saw him here. But it wasn’t you he was looking for. I know just what he knew, and believe me, it wasn’t much.’

‘How could you know that?’

‘Because it was me who killed him. Maybe I didn’t actually apply the match, but indirectly, I am responsible.’ Goldman glanced at his watch and then briefly explained as much as he thought she now needed to know.

Edith got up and went over to the window, and stared out at the New Jersey shoreline. The few electric lights she could see looked like heavenly writing on the blackened wall of the universe. As if God was trying to tell her something.

Goldman stood up and put his hands on her slim shoulders. ‘Take it easy. If we all do like we’re supposed to, then everything will be all right. We can have no doubts about the legitimacy of what we’re doing. If you’d been watching the television news earlier, you would have seen that Raul Roa, the Cuban Foreign Minister, has called for an immediate meeting of the UN Security Council. He has come out and said what KGB and G2 have been saying for a long while: that an invasion of Cuba is less than three weeks away. Edith. Listen to me. We are the only ones who can stop this thing from happening. You, me, Tom, and Anne.’

‘But will it? Stop the invasion? I’m not so sure, Alex.’

Goldman shrugged. ‘To be honest, I have no idea. But orders are orders. Besides, we can’t just sit back and do nothing. Already there have been several attempts on Fidel’s life. And they’re not going to stop. Just because we’ve been able to arrest a few of the ringleaders in Havana doesn’t change anything. They will keep trying.’

Edith nodded. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Damn right, they will,’ frowned Goldman. ‘It makes me so angry. Do you know what the White House press secretary, James Haggerty, said in response to Raul Roa’s charges? He said “nuts”. Nuts. That’s what he would say to you now, if he were standing here, and you tried to tell him about the justice of the Cuban revolution. About how people are happier than when it was Batista and the mob who ruled Cuba. He’d say “nuts”. And Edith, if you tried to tell him how evil the Somoza family were, and how the people of Nicaragua want to be free of these bastards, he’d look you in the eye and say the same thing. Remember what Roosevelt said about Anastasio Somoza? He said, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Haggerty, Roosevelt, Kennedy, they are all the same, Edith. They look at the people of Central America and say “nuts”.’ Goldman sighed. ‘Nuts? I tell you, this country’s full of them.’

On New Year’s Day, a nor’easter poured more than two inches of rain on southern New England, causing minor flooding, and belting the northern states with two inches of snow. Not that Tom was bothered much by the weather. He spent the afternoon at the Astor Movie Theater on Boylston Street, watching Spartacus . This followed a New Year’s Eve when he had watched The Alamo at the Gary Theater. It seemed that revolution was becoming quite the fashion in Hollywood, even if it was the sword and sandals variety, or John Wayne battling to win freedom for Texans against the tyranny of the Mexican empire. The curious thing, however, was how none of this seemed to have any influence upon the popular American consciousness, vis à vis the popular revolution that had taken place in Cuba.

Tom did not think you could have had a more obvious example of a communist revolution, in all but name, than the story of a slave’s revolt. Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter, had even been one of the ‘Hollywood Ten’ blacklisted in the forties on suspicion of being a communist. In Tom’s eyes, it seemed very obvious that Spartacus had been nothing less than the Leninist archetype. It was no accident that after the Great War German communists had actually called themselves Spartakists. And there were times during the movie when he would not have been surprised to see Kirk Douglas waving a red flag, and Tony Curtis reading Marx and Engels. It was all very strange, this fear and loathing of communism. People in America seemed to have forgotten that but for the sacrifices of the Soviet Union — ten Red Army soldiers killed for every one of the Allies — the whole of Europe and Asia and maybe even America too would have been dominated by the Axis forces of fascism. Tom accepted that there was a lot wrong with communism, as practised in the Soviet Union. But it did not have to be that way in Cuba. Or, for that matter, in the United States.

Reading the newspapers, Tom had the sense that America was girding its loins to do battle with Cuba. Even the Boston Globe was full of anti-Cuban propaganda. On Monday, 2 January, the front page carried the headline ‘Police State Terror is Stamped on Cuba’. And for the rest of that week the Globe featured a series of articles by Anne Davies entitled ‘Inside Fidel Castro’s Cuba’, which, in Tom’s eyes, was not much more than a catalogue of all that was worst in the country. It did not seem to matter that there were many good things that had come out of the revolution. And many bad things that had existed before. If it was Cuban, it followed that it was also bad.

That same Monday, around lunchtime, he loaded the station wagon with a Blizzard ski-bag and two large green cloth bags of the type that every Harvard student seemed to carry. The weather was better. Fair, but colder, with temperatures struggling to get much above the high twenties. The Cambridge air was damp and filled with the smell of burning Christmas trees.

Tom drove west along Massachusetts Avenue and parked close to the imposing Johnson Gate. Already there were a few parents bent on the same task as Tom: carrying boxes and luggage into dorms for sons returning to Harvard after the Christmas holidays. Respectably attired in a coat and hat, wearing a Yale tie, and with a pipe fixed firmly between his teeth, Tom fancied he looked as much like someone’s dad helping his son move back into the dorm as it was possible to look, short of wearing a cardigan, and trying to pass himself off as Spencer Tracy. Even so, this was one of the trickiest aspects of the plan. If he was challenged he would have to talk his way out of a spot, which, without flashing his fake FBI ID, might prove to be awkward. As things turned out, being challenged would almost have been easier than being assisted.