Linda Fairstein - The Kills

The CIA had lurked on the outskirts of our case since the beginning. Andrew Tripping claimed to have been an agent. Victor Vallis may have been in their employ when he returned to Cairo in the early fifties. The faux Harry Strait had pretended to Paige Vallis that he was a CIA agent, when in fact the real Harry Strait had been a member of the Secret Service. What had linked these individuals together, to the government agencies, and to our case?

"The CIA," I asked, "was it actually involved with King Farouk?"

"In a very big way. Teddy Roosevelt's grandson-his name was Kermit-was the CIA's main man in Cairo in the early fifties. He made a fast friend of the king."

"That was easy to do?"

"Well, Farouk considered the Roosevelt family the royalty of the U.S. That was part of his access. And also Roosevelt had a guy on his staff who had an inside track."

"What do you mean?"

"Kermit Roosevelt brought with him as an aide a young Foreign Service officer who had served in the thirties as Farouk's tutor-a brilliant guy who spoke six or seven languages and knew more world history-"

Mike Chapman filled in the blanks, letting out a low whistle. "Victor Vallis."

"That's exactly right," said Lori. "I didn't realize the CIA would have been so cooperative and given you so much information."

Not to worry, I thought. You called that one right. The fact that we knew an occasional name or fact seemed to encourage her to trust us with more details.

"Apparently, the king was very fond of Victor from the old days-they were practically the same age, and he treated his old tutor like a brother. Gave him the run of the palace."

"Knowing he was CIA?"

"Oh, no. Believing that he just held some low-level post, the kind a tutor-cum-grad-student would land the first few times out. This Vallis fellow lived virtually inside the royal quarters, had an apartment of his own there."

"Talk about access and opportunity," Mercer said.

"So the CIA," I asked, "did they support Farouk's reign?"

Lori Alvino shook her head. "Not for long. FDR had two goals. He needed Egypt as a democratic stronghold in the Middle East, since the rest of the region was so susceptible to communism. And he was among the first to recognize the importance of Arab oil to fuel the American economy. Farouk? He was a loose cannon, and the Americans realized they couldn't control him."

"So the U.S. funded the Egyptian coup? We backed General Nasser and Anwar Sadat?"

She pursed her lips. "Not with guns and tanks and planes. Simply with the promise that if their coup was successful, the Americans would not step in to save the king."

"And when the time came?"

"Nasser's rebels took over the Egyptian army, closed the airfields so Farouk couldn't escape on one of his private planes, and held his royal yacht in dry dock. The king himself called the embassy to get Truman to intercede on his behalf-by then FDR was long dead-but the president refused to do it. His enemies sent him off into exile-with seventy pieces of luggage rumored to be packed with gold ingots and hidden jewels. The Americans never lifted a hand to help King Farouk."

"But the rebels let him live," Mike said.

"Nasser was no fool. He didn't want to risk a civil war, or make Farouk a martyr by killing him," Lori said.

"Do the math," Mike said. "Farouk had a five-hundred-room palace, chock-full of priceless treasures. Best guess is he beats it out of town with all those suitcases and pockets full of goodies. The rest that got left behind-maybe four hundred rooms' worth of stuff-who got it all?"

Lori shrugged. "Some of it was auctioned by Sotheby's. Some of it was taken by the rebel soldiers-all his great racehorses-and everything from his cigar collection to some of his pornography showed up at Nasser's headquarters."

"The CIA was in on that?" I asked.

"At some levels, sure. The stories were legendary. Somebody seen sipping a martini at Shepheard's Bar in Cairo, pulling out a cigarette lighter with Farouk's initials; or a young agent coming home to the States with a unique assortment of Confederate coins, which happened to have been a hallmark of the king's collection-that kind of thing."

"Nobody called on the carpet for any of it?"

"Hard to do. Most of them would just say the items had been a gift from the king. Awfully tough to prove otherwise, after time went by."

"And Victor Vallis, any stories about him, about what he took out of the palace?"

"Odd guy, the tutor. Didn't seem to be interested in all the glitz around him. He was a scholar. Nobody worried about what he took, because he asked first."

"Asked what?"

"He wanted letters, correspondence, government missives. He was a paper man. Probably could have filled his shoes with gold, too, but apparently he didn't. Said he was going to write a book about Farouk, but I'm not sure he ever did. He moved out of the palace days after the king went into exile, and Nasser let him take boxes of documents with him, assuming the CIA was glad to see the old boy out of the country, too."

Mercer was still puzzling over all the names involved. "Harry Strait," he asked, "was he with the CIA?"

"Oh, no. One of our own. The very best. I'm sure Mr. Stark told you what an amazing job Harry did getting back the stray Double Eagles. Pure Secret Service."

"Did he have a son?"

"Harry? Never married. One of those guys whose whole life was the service."

"You've been very gracious with your information, Lori," I said. I didn't want to reveal to her how tight the CIA had been in response to our efforts to get files on Vallis, Tripping, and Strait. But a deposed Egyptian king was a different story. "It's hard to imagine that half a century after this coup, the CIA still considers Farouk's files a matter of national security, isn't it? It's been hard to get the facts we need on all this."

"Ten years in exile, doin' as the Romans do," Mike said. "Wine, women, and song. Fat and happy. Has his last supper, smokes a big fat cigar, and then croaks at the dinner table. When you think of the fates of a lot of monarchs-from the guillotine to the firing squad-all in all, not a bad way for the king to die."

"That's just the official version, Mike," Lori Alvino told him. "That's the way the newspapers played it. The fact is, Mr. Homicide Detective, King Farouk was murdered."

"What the Romans needed, Mike, was a good homicide cop," Lori said. "They rolled over on this one, big-time."

He was standing at the window, looking at the traffic going eastbound over the Brooklyn Bridge. I knew what he was thinking, because I was trying to make the same kinds of connections. What was it that linked the unnatural death of an Egyptian king in Rome back in 1965 to the murders in New York City, in the last few days, of a Harlem dancer and the daughter of a former CIA operative? "How'd it happen?" Mike asked.

"Most of what you know from history books and old newspaper stories is true. The man weighed almost four hundred pounds. He smoked like a fiend, and took medication for high blood pressure. Went out for dinner at a fancy restaurant, in full view of a big crowd."

"Something on the menu he wasn't expecting?"

"Let me remember," she said. "I think he had a dozen oysters, a nice rich lobster Newburg, followed by roast baby lamb, with about six side dishes, and flaming crêpe suzettes for dessert. He lit up his Havana, and in front of a roomful of spectators, his head fell onto the table and he dropped dead."

"Cause of death at autopsy?"

"What autopsy?" Lori Alvino asked. "That's the whole point. Nobody ordered an autopsy. The king died of excess, they said at the time. A cerebral hemorrhage. It seemed so obvious that people didn't question it."

"But in fact?" Mercer asked.