Charles Mccarry - The Tears Of Autumn

“What now?” Christopher said.

“It’s over. The problem is, Foley believes you. He doesn’t want your theory proved.”

“You’re willing to drop it?”

“Of course. If the White House doesn’t want it, we won’t do it.”

“Well, it would have been nice if we’d got some Texan instead of Foley to talk to,” Christopher said.

“The answer might have been the same. If the truth is known, the truth will come out. Nobody wants that-not even you.”

“We know lots of truths that never come out, David.”

“Not on this scale. This couldn’t be hidden. It would blacken the name of the dead President. It would stand foreign policy on its head.”

They were in front of a bar, and Patchen started toward its door. “Let’s stop outside a minute,” Christopher said. “You know what’s involved here, David. If these politicians never know what happened, they’ll do it again.”

“Yes. They will.”

“You don’t think that’s worth preventing?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to prevent it, Paul. You have a flaw-you think the truth will make men free. But it only makes them angry. They believe what suits them, they do what they want to do, just like the slobs we’re going to find lined up at the bar in there. Human beings are a defective species, my friend. Accept it.”

“But don’t you want to know?”

“Sure I do-I even say we should know, that we’re doing damage to the outfit, not to say the country, if we don’t pursue this to the end. But we don’t run operations against the United States government.”

“Foley is not the United States government.”

“Foley would say you’re talking treason.”

“I’d say that’s pretty melodramatic,” Christopher said. “We were told from the beginning that our job is to keep the water clean. We feed the politicians information, they do what they want with it. But we don’t doctor the information to suit political purposes, much less the emotional purposes of a short-timer like Dennis Foley. What Foley wants from us is a kind of treason -his illusions are more important than the truth.”

“That’s what I just got through telling you.”

“We don’t seem to be understanding each other very well, David. Would it help, do you think, if we spoke German?”

“Paul, you really are an arrogant bastard,” Patchen said. “Your whole career has been a series of moral lessons for the rest of us. You won’t use a gun. You won’t betray an agent. You won’t give support to a regime that tortures political prisoners. You won’t countenance a coup against the Ngos, even though you’ve done more than anyone else to create a political opposition to them. Only your means justify the end. People have been telling me for years that you’re more trouble than you’re worth, and I’m beginning to see the point.”

Patchen’s voice did not change its tone; he might have been reading aloud from a newspaper.

“I guess I’m lucky to have had you as a protector,” Christopher said.

“I can’t protect you from these people. You’re out in the open now, and they sure don’t like the look of you.”

“Foley’s an amateur.”

“We would have said the same thing about Lee Harvey Oswald.”

“Yes, but he was operating against other amateurs.”

“And he had professional advice.”

“Yes, I think so.”

A man and a young girl came out of the bar, holding hands. They stood in the doorway for a moment, looking up and down the street for a taxi.

“Have you tried the Cantina d’Italia, up the street?” Patchen asked Christopher, in a louder voice. “I think it’s the best Italian restaurant in the world, outside of Italy.”

The couple walked by Christopher and Patchen and crossed the street to the taxi stand in front of the Mayflower.

“You realize you’re not going to be able to go out under our auspices,” Patchen said. “Foley will have been on the phone to the Director. It won’t be permitted.”

“Then I’ll do it on my own.”

“You may die.”

“That’s always a possibility.”

Patchen let a moment pass before he answered. “You really don’t care, do you?” he said.

“Yes, I care. Less than some, I guess. I’ve never liked the death of others.”

“How are you going to handle it?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. I want to understand what happens to you.”

“I’ll either find out very quickly or not at all,” Christopher said. “I’ll have to walk in on them and tell them what I think, and watch the reaction. I think they may want it to be known.”

“Want it to be known?”

“Yes. Think about it. If no one knows, what was the point in doing it?”

Patchen absorbed this idea, then nodded his head.

“I’ll fire you in the morning,” he said. “If you live, and if you want to come back inside, it can be arranged. Foley won’t last forever with Lyndon Johnson.”

“The bar’s going to close. Let’s go in.”

Patchen had one more thing to say. Christopher was surprised: it was unlike Patchen to be the one who prolonged a conversation.

“It takes about a month to inform everyone in the field of a resignation,” he said. “I won’t hurry it. You may want to talk to the people in the stations.”

“Yes, there may be a question or two I’d want to ask.”

“If you need support in any kind of an emergency, you know they’ll give it to you. We’ll justify it later.”

Christopher smiled at him. “You shouldn’t be saying these things. What if I’m tortured?”

Patchen waved away the pleasantry. “Speaking of that, I wouldn’t rely too much on Wolkowicz. He and Foley are friends. The White House took an interest in Wolkowicz’s career after the Bay of Pigs.”

“Took an interest in his career?”

Patchen exhaled his dry laugh. “Wolkowicz was their idea of what a master spy should be. They all read those paperback books about secret agents. Wolkowicz carries guns and talks like a gangster. They were talking about Castro in one of the planning sessions-what to do with him after Cuba was liberated. Wolkowicz took out his revolver, removed a cartridge from the cylinder, and rolled the bullet across the table. In the Cabinet Room. That was when his star began to rise.”

Patchen opened the door for Christopher. “Now let me buy you one last beer,” he said.

Foley had not intended to return the phone call. When he saw the message on his desk he didn’t recognize the name of the man who had called him.

“He’s a Green Beret captain,” Foley’s secretary explained. “He’s on his way to Vietnam. He said his sister is a friend of yours. Her name is Peggy McKinney.”

Foley frowned and crumpled the slip on which the message was written.

“He said you and his sister met in Paris.”

Foley remembered. He handed his secretary the ball of paper. “Set up an appointment for him today,” he said. “Here.”

He put a plain sheet of paper in his own typewriter and began to write the letter he wanted Peggy McKinney’s brother to deliver for him. Then he phoned a man at the Pentagon and arranged to have the captain assigned to an army intelligence unit stationed on Saigon.

When the captain appeared in Foley’s office, he stood at attention in front of the desk. Foley, in shirtsleeves, grinned at him.

“Sit down, Captain,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I didn’t want to intrude on you-Peggy just asked me to call up and say hello.”

“I’m glad you did. Peggy’s terrific.”

The captain was about twenty-five, dark and fine-strung like his sister.