"Suddenly, I didn't have a choice. Because no matter how much of a kook I thought he was, he had just told me about a plot to kill the president of the United States. I knew no one would believe me, but I couldn't just sit on it and do nothing."
***
Gordon McCay's motorhome sat in the parking lot of a building supply store on the edge of the small town of Wilburton, Oklahoma. Jake finished nailing the cabin door shut with a couple pieces of scrap plywood he had scrounged from the Dumpster. Then he checked his watch. It was 1:00 p.m.
He climbed into the cab through the passenger door and stepped into the cabin. The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. Stacy, Gordon, and Favreau glanced up at him from their seats around the bolted-down coffee table. Everything else had been knocked to the floor. Jake looked at Gordon. "You smoke?"
Gordon shook his head. "Doctor made me quit."
Jake turned to Favreau. "You still got those Lucky Strikes?"
The Frenchman smiled as he pulled the crumpled pack from his pocket and handed it to Jake.
Stacy gave him a curious look. "I didn't know you smoked."
"I don't," Jake said as he pulled a cigarette from the pack. His hands shook. He held the pack out to Stacy. "Want one?"
She hesitated. "I only smoke if I'm drinking."
Jake turned again to Gordon. "Got anything to drink?"
Gordon smiled. "I had to quit that too."
Favreau handed Jake a lighter. He lit his cigarette and pulled down a long drag. And coughed it right back up. He took a second drag and it stayed down. His hands stopped shaking.
Stacy reached for the pack. "Oh, what the hell. We're probably about to die anyway." Jake lit her cigarette, then handed the pack and the lighter back to Favreau, who plucked one out for himself and lit it.
"I still don't understand it," Gordon said. "Half the cops in Oklahoma should be hunting for us by now, but we passed three Highway Patrol cars on the way here, and they didn't give us so much as a second look."
"The people chasing us aren't going to cooperate with local law enforcement," Jake said.
Stacy blew out a long stream of smoke. "So the police aren't after us, but a band of killer mercenaries are."
"And the FBI," Jake said, as he took a seat on the sofa next to her.
Stacy picked up a cracked coffee cup from the floor and set it on the table as an ashtray. "Somebody remind me again why I signed up for this trip."
"We came from different directions," Gordon said. "But we're all here for the same reason. To find the truth."
"Speaking of truth," Jake said, eyeing Favreau. "Start talking."
Favreau arched his eyebrows and shrugged. "Where do you want me to begin?"
"Try the beginning," Jake said.
Stacy took a last drag and stubbed out her cigarette in the coffee cup. "Tell us about Dallas."
Favreau closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he nodded. "I was the backup shooter. Oswald was the primary. He was supposed to fire when the president's limousine slowed to make the turn onto Elm Street. I was behind the stockade fence, on what people now call the grassy knoll."
The words grassy knoll flooded Jake's mind with the televised images from that day, especially the Zapruder film.
The motorcade slowing for the turn. The handsome young president and beautiful first lady smiling and waving to the adoring crowd.
"But Oswald hesitated," Favreau said. "The limousine made the turn and pulled away. Then it picked up speed. He didn't fire until it was almost too late."
The president and first lady still smiling and waving as they approach the Stemmons Freeway sign.
"Oswald missed his first shot."
The limousine disappearing for an instant behind the sign.
"His second shot hit the president high in the back."
President and Mrs. Kennedy emerging from behind the road sign. A look of distress on the president's face. His hands jerking up to his collar. Governor Connally spinning around in the front seat, clearly in pain. Jackie Kennedy turning to her husband.
"When the limousine reached me, I could see the president was still alive."
Mrs. Kennedy putting a gloved hand on her husband's shoulder and leaning close as if to ask what's wrong.
"So I fired."
The front right portion of President Kennedy's head exploding. Mrs. Kennedy climbing out of the back seat and crawling across the trunk. A Secret Service agent clambering onto the back bumper. The limousine accelerating. Obscured by a tree. Then the film winding out. The screen in Jake's mind going white.
Silence enveloped the inside of the motorhome.
Finally, Gordon cleared his throat. "What happened after?"
Favreau took a deep breath. "I was supposed to meet Oswald at the rendezvous point. My instructions were to kill him."
"Why kill him?" Stacy asked.
"He was the patsy."
Stacy shook her head. "What does that mean, exactly?"
"There's always a patsy," Favreau said. "Someone to take the blame."
"Preferably someone who can't talk anymore," Gordon added.
Jake stared at the Frenchman and heard himself say, "Go on."
Favreau took another deep breath. "Afterward, I decided—"
"No," Jake snapped. "You don't get to say afterward and skip ahead. I want to hear it. I want you to admit exactly what you did."
For several seconds Favreau stared into Jake's eyes. Then in a low voice he said, "After I killed the president..." He looked at Jake. Jake nodded and Favreau continued. "I was finished. I didn't want to meet Oswald. I didn't want to kill Oswald. I didn't want to kill anyone ever again. So I ran away."
"Where?" Stacy asked.
"French Guiana to get a new name and a new passport. Then to Africa. I had been a soldier. A paratrooper. I'd fought in Algeria. I liked Africa, so I went to the Congo and joined up with the mercenaries under Mike Hoare and Jean Schramme."
Jake interrupted him. "You just said you didn't want to kill anyone else."
Favreau shrugged. "Fighting was all I knew."
"Go on," Stacy said.
"After the Congo, I hired out to work security in South Africa. I went back to France in 1980, learned how to fly an airplane and started smuggling. Just cigarettes and liquor at first. Then heroin. I got caught and sentenced to ten years. While I was in prison, technology caught up with me. The French government computerized all of its records. The new system found two sets of my fingerprints, one with my real name, the other with my new name.
"The CIA sent a man to see me in prison. The same man who recruited me for Dallas. He said he could get me an early release and I could work for him...or he could have another inmate cut my throat that night."
"What did he want you to do?" asked Jake, who, much to his own surprise, was starting to believe Andre Favreau's story.
"He wanted me to be the driver and bodyguard for Mad Jack Gillard, the so-called godfather of Marseilles."
"Why?" Stacy asked.
"Mad Jack smuggled heroin through North Africa to Europe and America," Favreau said. "The CIA was his partner. They wanted someone to keep an eye on their investment."
"Their investment?" Stacy said.
Favreau shrugged. "That's the way they look at it."
"Why does everything keep coming back to heroin?" Jake asked.
"Because heroin is one of the world's most valuable commodities," Favreau said. "It's worth a lot more than gold. It's easier to sell than diamonds. And it's completely untraceable."
"You make the CIA sound like the Mafia," Stacy said.
"No," Favreau corrected her. "The CIA is not like the Mafia. The CIA is much worse than the mafia. And much more powerful. But even the CIA can't operate in a country as dangerous as Afghanistan without the protection of your military."
"So when the president pulls out all the troops..."
"The Agency's heroin pipeline shuts down," Favreau said.
"And they're going to kill him, assassinate him, for that?" Stacy asked.
Favreau nodded. "Just like they did before."