Chuck
After supper my wife pleaded work to finish on her desk and I said that I would go downstairs and think about the mystery of the two women named Bride Mary.
I did not want to think and I don’t think she wanted to finish any work. My impulsive assault on her breast earlier in the day had kind of knocked us both out. How does one live in the same house with a woman who infatuates you and whose body is available for play all day—especially if you have work to do. Doubtless she had similar questions.
My first move was to make a call to DC to a man I knew in my completely crazy adventure in Vietnam. He had left government service a few years later and was the CEO of an important consulting firm, which in his case didn’t mean working with spooks. He knew just about everything on the subject, however.
After an exchange of pleasantries and my telling him about taking pictures of the president, I said to him, “Whitney, I have a couple of questions to ask in this conversation which has never occurred, okay?”
“I was here watching TV all night and waiting for my wife to come home from a gala at the Kennedy Center.”
“When I was in Bonn, some of the spooks executed their own people because they suspected the Stasi had turned them. Does that still happen?”
“Were the victims American? That doesn’t change the
morality of the action, but from the point of view of their employers it would make a big difference.”
“Germans.”
“I imagine that those cowboys were not employed with the Company for long.”
“Company” was what the insiders called the CIA for whatever twisted reason.
“If the people whom they terminated with extreme prejudice were Americans and indeed fellow agents?”
“They themselves would be dead in a week. You can’t do that without explicit permission from the top and that is almost never given. That doesn’t mean that some rogues don’t try it, but they themselves will end up sanctioned.”
“Sanction” meant the same thing as “terminate with extreme prejudice.” Murder in other words.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. Through the years the rule has always been that if you sanction one of ours, we’ll sanction you. Everyone knows that.”
So maybe there was still some hope for the second Bride Mary O’Brien.
“What about the occasional agent that seems to disappear from the face of the earth?”
Silence for a moment on the other end of the line.
“Chuck, I will answer your questions because I know you are always on the side of the good guys. But I won’t ask you any, as much as I would like to. Fair enough?”
“Absolutely.”
“I know of an aviator who vanished during the Vietnam War, under very mysterious circumstances. His friends claimed that he was never shot down, till someone told them to shut up. He went underground, ended up at GPU headquarters in Moscow. Fooled them for years. Then our people ordered him to come in out of the cold. They were afraid he’d be caught and the Commies would eliminate all the, uh, resources he had. I don’t know the details. The Russians thought he was dead. When he came back here, they told him that they would take care of him for the rest of his life, but they had to give him a new identity, even
some plastic surgery. He could never see his family again. He knew that this would happen when he took the assignment. The family somehow is convinced that he is still alive. The Feds brush them off. They also quiet down any congressman who takes an interest. He lives near his family, so he can see them from a distance occasionally. Our people encourage that because they believe it keeps the agent in the reservation. He never remarried. I heard recently that now, twenty years later, his resources from Russia are all dried up. They may release him. Too soon to know … Brave, patriotic man.”
“Resources” meant agents, human agents. It’s easier to pretend that you’re losing something abstract than a human person.
“You ever talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“What does he say about Russia?”
“Same thing you told Ronnie the other day.”
“You heard about that?”
“Everyone in the business heard about it. Some of us think you’re absolutely right.”
“Is the present crowd strong enough to prevent any sanctions against an agent who is as brave as your friend?”
“No termination, maybe hide him for a while. Some of those guys broke the rules for Dick Nixon and lived to regret it. Never again.”
“You’re sure?”
“Look, Chuck, you know that I don’t like the business. That’s why I got out of it. There are, however, a number of good reasons why we don’t sanction our own. First of all, we are Americans, we are the good guys, we wear the white hats. We stand by our own. We bring out our wounded and dead, right? If we were Russians, we’d simply liquidate them and be done with it. That’s not the American way. Secondly, if we did terminate the pilot I was talking about, the word would get around pretty quickly and no one would ever take risks like that again.”
“What if he simply told your friends someday that he was going back to his wife and family?”
Silence.
“Well, there’d be some cowboys who would want to terminate
him. Too much of a risk, they’d say. He’s gone rogue. Can’t tell what he might do.”
“Then?”
“Then they would be told firmly that they wouldn’t themselves last another week.”
“Ugh,” I murmured.
“That’s why I got out of it Chuck. I hate the cowboys. But even they don’t want to die. Maybe we’d lock the pilot up for a time, then we’d let him go. He’s not about to do that, however. He’s a real American patriot.”
“I guess so,”I said.
Or a flaming nut. But what did I know?
I thought a long time about our conversation. Bride Mary and Samantha were most likely still alive. I could threaten the Feds, who knew me well enough from Bonn and Saigon not to mess around with me, that I’d go public with the whole story. I didn’t think they’d try to sanction me, but I would build in all the safeguards that would make it pretty certain that they wouldn’t try.
“We don’t fuck around with Charlie O’Malley,” a spook had told me in Saigon. “He’s a crazy little bastard and very dangerous.”
I was and still am very proud of that evaluation, but it gives me credit for a lot more courage than I really possess.
I needed one more piece of evidence to lock it up. I didn’t have to know what Bride Mary O’Brien II had done for the Feds. I needed some evidence however, that they had pulled the switch. Then I could go ahead with the almost diabolically clever scheme that was turning around in my head.
I had to turn off the scheming machine or I wouldn’t sleep at all. There was one cure for it and she was upstairs. I glanced at my watch—11:30. What an idiot I was! I claimed that I was infatuated with her and had forgotten about her.
I hurried up to our room, which was dark, undressed quickly, and slipped into bed. I was in deep trouble. She wasn’t wearing a nightgown. “Sorry to be late,” I whispered.
“Chucky Ducky, I love you so much I’d wait for you forever!”
Then, sentimental fool that I am, I began to cry. She did too.