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Tim Kring and Dale Peck.

Operation Mongoose Project Eurydice Our Man in Havana Leary's Little Trip Department of Justice Building, Washington, DC - May 17, 1963 Captions

yet the G.o.ds sent Orpheus5 away from Hades empty-handed ... away from Hades empty-handed ...-Plato, Symposium Symposium

Dallas, TX December 30, 2012

The apparition appeared at 11:22 a.m. over I-35, in the two-hundred-foot gap between the north- and southbound lanes where the interstate pa.s.sed over Commerce Street. Traffic was heavy at that hour, but moving well: twelve lanes on 35, average speed sixty-six miles per hour, another six on Commerce traveling only slightly less fast. When the flaming figure appeared in the sky, the results were predictably disastrous.

According to the Texas State Highway Patrol, thirty-five vehicles collided with one another, resulting in seventy-seven injuries: cuts and bruises, whiplash, broken bones, concussions, at least three seizures. A pregnant woman went into labor, but both she and the baby-and, remarkably, everyone else involved in the pileup-survived the trauma. In addition to the injured, another 1,886 people claimed to have seen the apparition, making a grand total of 1,963, a figure later confirmed by both the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas Morning News. Dallas Morning News. It was this last number that sent the story, already ricocheting around the airwaves and the Internet, into the stratosphere It was this last number that sent the story, already ricocheting around the airwaves and the Internet, into the stratosphere.

12/30.

11:22.

1963.

The time, date, and year that the thirty-fifth president of the United States had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, less than a quarter mile due east of the sighting.

It was possible-possible, though infinitesimally improbable-that this sequence was just a coincidence. Why hadn't the figure appeared at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, skeptics were soon enough arguing on chat shows and blogs, the actual date and time of the a.s.sa.s.sination? What was harder for them to dismiss was the fact that every single witness, all 1,963 of them, reported seeing exactly exactly the same thing. This wasn't a fuzzy image of a crucified Jesus on a piece of toast or the shadowy outline of the Virgin Mary in an MRI. In fact, none of the twenty-six traffic and surveillance cameras with a view of the same thing. This wasn't a fuzzy image of a crucified Jesus on a piece of toast or the shadowy outline of the Virgin Mary in an MRI. In fact, none of the twenty-six traffic and surveillance cameras with a view of the area recorded anything besides the accident itself. Nevertheless, each and every witness reported seeing- the area recorded anything besides the accident itself. Nevertheless, each and every witness reported seeing- "A boy," Michael Campbell, twenty-nine, told one reporter.

"A flaming boy," Antonio Gonzales, fifty-six, told the paramedic bandaging the gouge over his left eye.

"A boy made of fire," Lisa Wallace, thirty-four, told the person who answered the 800 number of her insurance carrier.

"He looked right at me."

"It was like he was looking for someone."

"But it wasn't me."

There was a palpable sense of disappointment as witness after witness made this last admission, as if they'd somehow failed a test. But then their spirits perked up when they reported that they'd felt the boy coming, as if the privilege of witnessing his appearance was a blessing on the order of those bestowed on the sainted receivers of visions at Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima. One after another, witnesses reported the sensation of a tremor in the roadway that came up through their cars and was absorbed by fingers and toes and bottoms-the kind of vibration Mindy Pysanky, a California native, described as "like the start of an earthquake." Hands tightened their grips on steering wheels or door handles, eyes scanned mirrors and windshields for the cause of the disturbance, which appeared-no matter where people were, whether they approached the area from north or south or east or west-directly in their line of vision, facing them. Looking them straight in the eye, and then looking away.

"I saw him as clearly as I see your face," said Yu Wen, fourteen.

"His eyes were wide open," said Jenny McDonald, twenty-eight.

"His mouth was open too," said Billy Ray Baxter, seventy-nine.

"A perfect O," said Charlotte Wolfe, thirty-six, adding: "It was the saddest face I ever saw in my life."

"Not just sad," Halle Wolfe, Charlotte's daughter, eleven, clarified. "Lonely."

The boy blazed in the air "for three or four seconds," a figure that caused almost as much furor as the previous numbers, as lone gunman supporters lined up against conspiracy theorists over whether the apparition was some kind of otherworldly endors.e.m.e.nt of the Warren Commission's1 findings or those of the House Select Committee on a.s.sa.s.sinations. No matter which side you were on, however, it was hard to say findings or those of the House Select Committee on a.s.sa.s.sinations. No matter which side you were on, however, it was hard to say what what the flaming boy could have the flaming boy could have had to do with a crime whose forty-ninth anniversary had gone largely un-remarked-upon a month earlier. Not one of the witnesses said he reminded them of the dead president or his (presumed) a.s.sa.s.sin. In fact, almost everyone expressed disinterest in the unnerving string of numbers when it was relayed to them, let alone the proximity of the sighting to Dealey Plaza, the Texas School Book Depository, the gra.s.sy knoll had to do with a crime whose forty-ninth anniversary had gone largely un-remarked-upon a month earlier. Not one of the witnesses said he reminded them of the dead president or his (presumed) a.s.sa.s.sin. In fact, almost everyone expressed disinterest in the unnerving string of numbers when it was relayed to them, let alone the proximity of the sighting to Dealey Plaza, the Texas School Book Depository, the gra.s.sy knoll.

One thousand, nine hundred sixty-three witnesses. All of them seeing the same thing: a seraphic figure ten feet tall, arms and legs trailing off in ropes of fire, a corona of flame rising from his head. The empty shadows of his eyes scanned the crowd while a silent cry leaked with the smoke from his open mouth. Sixty-two percent of witnesses used the word "angel" to describe the appearance, 27 percent used the word "demon," the remaining 11 percent used both. But only one man said that he looked like Orpheus.

"From the myth," Lemuel Haynes, a businessman "from the East Coast," told Shana Wright, on-air correspondent for the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC affiliate. "You know, turning around, looking for Eurydice, only to see her dragged back down to h.e.l.l?"

Wright, who later described Haynes as "elderly, but still fit, with a large build, dark hair, and mixed complexion," said that the witness told her he'd just landed at Love Field and was on his way to a meeting.

"What a lucky coincidence," Wright recalled telling him, "that it should show up at the same time you did," to which Haynes replied: "Luck had nothing to do with it."

According to Wright, she then asked Haynes if he thought the apparition had anything to do with the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination. Haynes looked over Wright's shoulder for a long time-at the Texas School Book Depository, she later realized, which was just visible through the famous Triple Underpa.s.s-before turning back to her.

"It has everything to do with it," he said, "and nothing at all," and then his driver, "a middle-aged Asian man with a wiry build," knocked her cameraman unconscious and took the memory chip from his camera.

By the time Homeland Security arrived at the scene, they were gone.

2.

We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers, to declare, that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere, as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence, and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration, and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling, in any other manner, their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States.

... It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent, without endangering our peace and happiness: nor can any one believe that our Southern Brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and those new governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course.

-James Monroe, 1823

Camaguey Province, Cuba October 26, 1963

The big man with the cigar pinched between thumb and forefinger towered over the bound, quivering form of Eddie Bayo, one foot on the fallen man's throat like a gladiator stamping victory on a vanquished foe. The foot was shod in a woven leather sandal-less gladiator than plain old huarache-and the sock had a hole in the big toe, but even so, it was pretty clear who was in charge. towered over the bound, quivering form of Eddie Bayo, one foot on the fallen man's throat like a gladiator stamping victory on a vanquished foe. The foot was shod in a woven leather sandal-less gladiator than plain old huarache-and the sock had a hole in the big toe, but even so, it was pretty clear who was in charge.

The six-inch-long pencil-thin panatela had a name-it was a Gloria Cubana Medaille d'Or No. 4-but the big man's name had disappeared along with his mother when he was a little boy, and for two decades he'd thought of himself only by the cipher bestowed on him when the Wiz plucked him out of the orphanage in New Orleans: Melchior. One of the three Wise Men. The black one, to be specific, which told you something about the way he was perceived in Langley, as well as about the Wiz's less-than-genteel Mississippi brand of humor.

Just looking at him, you couldn't say for sure. His skin had been described by various adjectives ranging from "olive" to "swarthy" to "high yellow." One of the maids in the orphanage had told him to embrace his "redbone" heritage, and his favorite wh.o.r.e in Havana's Central Central bordellos called him bordellos called him "cafe con leche," "cafe con leche," which amused him no end-especially when she said he was "good to the last drop." But none of this changed the fact that after twenty years in American intelligence-and despite the fact that he stood six feet two inches tall, with shoulders like cantaloupes and thighs reminiscent of wooden barrels-he was still referred to as the Wiz's pickaninny. which amused him no end-especially when she said he was "good to the last drop." But none of this changed the fact that after twenty years in American intelligence-and despite the fact that he stood six feet two inches tall, with shoulders like cantaloupes and thighs reminiscent of wooden barrels-he was still referred to as the Wiz's pickaninny.

So: Melchior.

He raised the cigar to his mouth to bring up the cherry. The glowing tip illuminated full lips, aquiline nose, dark eyes that gleamed with singularity of intent. A copious amount of brilliantine wasn't quite able to eliminate the curl in his thick, dark locks. He could have been Greek, Sephardic, a horseman from the steppes of the Caucasus-although, in his bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned, double-breasted navy linen suit, he looked like nothing so much as a sugar hacendado hacendado from before the from before the revolucion revolucion. The suit had in fact belonged to a former plantation owner, until he'd been executed for crimes against the proletariat.

Not that any of this mattered to Eddie Bayo.

"I don't wanna have to ask you again, Eddie," his captor said in Spanish not just perfect, but perfectly Cuban, albeit in a guttural kind of way.

"f.u.c.k your mother," Bayo gasped against the foot on his throat. His snarl didn't really come off, given that his upper lip looked like a slug that'd been ground beneath someone's heel-which, in fact, it had.

Melchior brought the glowing tip of his cigar to Bayo's right nipple. "My mother, being long dead, has a s.n.a.t.c.h that's too dried up for my taste." Flesh sizzled; smoke tickled his nostrils; Bayo's throat convulsed beneath the foot on his Adam's apple but all that came out was a strangled gurgle. When Melchior took the cigar away, Bayo's nipple looked like a volcanic crater. A dozen more black and red coronas were scattered across his chest, although it would have taken a particularly rarefied eye to notice that they occupied the same relative positions as the major Hawaiian volcanoes. Geography had been one of the Wiz's first lessons to his protege, along with the importance of keeping yourself amused.

A hole flashed behind the notch of his lapel as Melchior reached into his breast pocket for his Zippo, and he rubbed it lightly between his fingers; he could just feel the dried blood that kept it from fraying.

"You're running out of skin, Eddie," he said, relighting. "I'm gonna have to go for the eyes soon. Believe me when I tell you, few things hurt more than a cigar in the eye."

Bayo said something unintelligible. Behind his back his bound hands audibly scratched against the splintered floorboards, as though he hoped he could still dig himself out of this one.

"What was that, Eddie, I couldn't make it out. Your mouth must be dry from all the screaming. Here, let me help." Melchior grabbed a long-necked bottle of rum, poured the shot on Bayo's chest rather than in his mouth. Bayo moaned as the alcohol burned his wounds but didn't actually start screaming until Melchior sparked his lighter against the spilled rum. Six-inch tongues of flame danced on Bayo's skin for almost a full minute. A boxer once told Melchior that you didn't know how long a minute was until you stepped in the ring with Ca.s.sius Clay, but Melchior was pretty sure Bayo would take exception to that statement.

When the flames finally went out, Bayo's skin was bubbling like a pancake that needed turning over. Melchior puffed on his cigar. "Well?"

"Why should I ... tell you ... anything?" Bayo panted. "You're just gonna ... kill me ... when you get ... what you want."

Melchior's lips curled around his cigar in a private smile. In the past two decades he'd heard people beg for their lives in more languages than the Hay-Adams had flags flying from its facade. But truth be told (and like most people who worked in intelligence, he'd long since forgotten what the word meant) he'd never actually killed someone in cold blood. Oh, he'd commissioned half a dozen hits in his day, shot his fair share of men in combat, but always under orders. Never once had he taken the law into his own hands, let alone gone Double-O on someone. But he was tired of Cuba-tired of this and every other banana republic and oil emirate and strategically significant sand spit he'd been deployed to over the past twenty years, and, now that the Wiz had been retired, he knew he was only one suicide mission away from being under under the field rather than the field rather than in in it. He needed Bayo's confession. Not just to learn the location of his rendezvous with a group of rogue Red Army officers, but to earn the security of an office in Langley. The field n.i.g.g.e.r was finally moving into the big house, and wasn't it. He needed Bayo's confession. Not just to learn the location of his rendezvous with a group of rogue Red Army officers, but to earn the security of an office in Langley. The field n.i.g.g.e.r was finally moving into the big house, and wasn't no one no one gonna get in his way. Least of all Eddie Bayo. gonna get in his way. Least of all Eddie Bayo.

"I like the No. 4," he said now, holding out the panatela as though evaluating it for purchase. "A simple cigar, but solid. Complements just about anything without overpowering it. You can smoke one with your morning coffee or wait till your after-dinner cognac. h.e.l.l, it even makes this disgusting Cuban rum taste okay. And of course the thinness"-Melchior jammed the cigar into the hollow of Bayo's left nostril-"allows for precision targeting."

Bayo's scream was like two plates of steel sliding against each other. The Cuban rolled and thrashed on the floor until once again Melchior put his sandaled foot on the man's throat.

"Roasted meat," he said, wrinkling his nose. "Lookit that. I finally found something the No. 4 don't go with."

"You don't get it," Bayo spat when he could talk again. "This is bigger than a two-bit thug like you. Russians won't back down. They got nothing to lose."

Melchior pulled his knife from its sheath.

"I don't got any safety pins on me, so I'm gonna have to slice your eyelid off so you can't blink. I imagine that'll hurt a fair bit, but it's gonna feel like heaven compared to the sensation of having your eyeball melted down like tallow. That's candle wax made from animal fat for an ignoramus like you. Like the kind the n.a.z.is made from the Jews. You want your sister to see you looking like that, Eddie?" He dropped to one knee. "You want Maria to see her big brother looking like a burned-out kike blubber candle?" Melchior sucked at the cigar, getting it brighter and brighter. "How old is she now? Maria. Eleven? Twelve?"

"Not even you-"

"Yes, Eddie, I would. If it would get me off this s.h.i.t-f.u.c.k island, I would gladly lay Fidel Castro on the altar of the Catedral de San Cristobal de la Habana in front of a full congregation and stick a communion wafer on the head of my d.i.c.k and shove it between what I a.s.sume, based on his beard, are a couple of incredibly hairy a.s.s cheeks. And I wouldn't even enjoy enjoy that. Especially the hairy part. But Maria? She's a pretty girl. No one's ever stubbed a cigar out on that. Especially the hairy part. But Maria? She's a pretty girl. No one's ever stubbed a cigar out on her her face. And no one ever will. Not if you talk to me." face. And no one ever will. Not if you talk to me."

He brought the cigar an inch away from Bayo's left eye.

"Talk to me, Eddie. Save us both the trouble."

Bayo had cojones, you had to give him that. Melchior was pretty sure it was the threat to his sister that broke him, not the pain. He whispered the name of a village about seven clicks away, close to the border of Las Villas.

"The big plantation south of town got burned out during the fighting in '58. Meeting's in the old mill."

Melchior jammed the cigar in his mouth and jerked Bayo to his knees. The seared skin of Bayo's chest split like wet paper when Melchior pulled him up, and a mixture of blood and pus spilled from the seam and ran down his stomach. But all Bayo did was bite his lip and close his eyes.

"You're a good man, Eddie. You can rest easy with the knowledge that your sister will never know what you did for her. Unless of course I go to the meet and no one shows."

Bayo didn't say anything, and Melchior exchanged his knife for his pistol, brought the gun to the back of Bayo's head. A shot to the back of the head sent a message. If you were going to execute someone, you might as well make it count. Still, the gun in his hand felt ponderously large and heavy, and Bayo's head seemed suddenly very small, as if, if Melchior's hand didn't stop shaking, he might miss. He brought the gun so close to Bayo's head that it tapped against his hair like a typewriter key worried by a twitching finger.

"They'll kill you, too," Bayo said, a desperate whine in his voice.

Melchior laid his thumb on the hammer to still it. "I'll take my chances."

"Not the Russians. The Comp-"

Bayo jerked to the left-even managed to get a foot on the floor before Melchior squeezed the trigger. Clumps of brain splattered across the room, along with his right ear and half his face. He remained upright for a second or two, wobbling like a metronome, then fell forward. His cracked skull shattered when it hit the floor, and his head flattened out like a half-inflated basketball.

As the reverberations of the shot faded from the room, it occurred to Melchior that he should have cut Bayo's throat with his knife. He only had five bullets left in his gun. Four now. If Bayo hadn't lunged, he would've remembered that before he pulled the trigger.

"d.a.m.n it, Eddie. You went and ruined it."

Well, that was Cuba for you. It could take the fun out of just about anything.

Cambridge, MA October 26, 1963

Fifteen hundred miles north as the crow flies (no airplane had made the journey since the embargo had started in February) Nazanin Haverman walked into a dingy bar in East Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. Morganthau had selected the King's Head because it was far enough from Harvard Yard that the usual rabble didn't frequent the place, yet still well known among "a certain set," as he called it. Naz hadn't asked who the members of that set were, but somehow she suspected they were responsible for the smug graffito scribbled on a months-old mimeograph advertising Martin Luther King's March on Washington: made the journey since the embargo had started in February) Nazanin Haverman walked into a dingy bar in East Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. Morganthau had selected the King's Head because it was far enough from Harvard Yard that the usual rabble didn't frequent the place, yet still well known among "a certain set," as he called it. Naz hadn't asked who the members of that set were, but somehow she suspected they were responsible for the smug graffito scribbled on a months-old mimeograph advertising Martin Luther King's March on Washington: W. E. B. DuBois went back to Africa.

Maybe you should join him!

There was a mirror in the vestibule, and Naz looked in the gla.s.s with the disinterested gaze of a woman who's long since learned to inspect her war paint without reckoning the face beneath. She took her gloves off, easing the right one over the big ruby on her third finger, which she rubbed, less for good luck than to remind herself that she still had it-that she could still sell it if things got really bad. Then, keeping her gait as steady as she could-she'd primed herself with one or two gin and tonics before she left home-she headed down the narrow corridor toward the bar.

It hit her as she paused in the jaundiced light over the inner door. The cigarette smoke and the stale odor of spilled drinks and the urgent murmur of voices, the sidelong glances and equally circ.u.mspect feelings that accompanied them. A miasma of frustrated, s.e.xually charged emotions swirled around her as palpably as the bolts of smoke, and against its press all she could do was fasten her eyes on the bar and forge ahead. Fifteen steps, she told herself, that's all she had to take. Then she could center herself around a tall, cold gla.s.s of gin.

Her form-fitting pearl gray suit directed the men's eyes to her hips, her waist, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the single open b.u.t.ton of decolletage in her white silk blouse. But it was her face that held them. Her mouth, its fullness made even more striking by deep red lipstick that picked up the color of the ruby on her right hand, her eyes, as dark and shiny as polished stone, but slightly blurred, too-anthracite rather than obsidian. And of course her hair, a ma.s.s of inky black waves that sucked up what little light there was and radiated it back in oil-slick rainbows. A hundred times she'd had it straightened with the fumy chemicals Boston's blanched housewives used to relax their hair, a hundred times it had sprung back to curl, and so, in lieu of the elaborately sculpted coifs that helmeted the rangy blondes and brunettes in the room, Naz's hair was piled against her skull in a thick ma.s.s that framed her face in a dark rippling halo. There was too much of it for her to wear one of the pillbox hats that Mrs. Kennedy had made all the rage, so she wore a bandeau instead, perched precariously forward on her head and held in place with a half dozen pins that p.r.i.c.ked at her skull.

The girls noticed her too, of course. Their stares were as hard as the men's, if significantly less sympathetic. It was a Sunday, after all. Business was slow.

"Beefeater and tonic, easy on the tonic," Naz said to the bartender, who was already setting a chilled Collins gla.s.s on the bar. "A splash of Rose's lime, please. I haven't eaten anything all day."

She tried not to gulp her drink as she perched herself on the bar stool, not quite facing the room-that would read as too obvious, too desperate-but not quite facing the bar either. The perfect angle to be looked at, yet not seem to look back. There was the mirror over the bar for that.

She brought her gla.s.s to her lips, was surprised to find it empty. That was quick, even for her.

That's when she noticed him. He'd stationed himself at the darkest corner of the bar, faced his drink like a defendant before a judge. Both hands were wrapped around the stem of his martini and his gaze was aimed directly at the olive at the bottom of the shallow pool. There was a sober expression on his face-ha!-as if he regarded what the drink was telling him very, very seriously.

Naz shifted her gaze to the mirror to study him more openly, tried to sort his vibe from the general miasma in the room. A new word, vibe. Part of the hipsters' jargon, which was creeping into the language like uncracked peppercorns that popped between your teeth. But you didn't need a special vocabulary to see that something was bothering this guy. A bitter olive that only a river of gin could keep below the surface. The sharpness of his eyes, the broad plain of his forehead below his dark hair, the delicate movement of his fingers all said that he was an intelligent man, but this wasn't a problem he could solve with his mind. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and, though he hunched over his martini like a dog guarding a bone, his spine was supple, not bowed. So he was athletic, too. But there were some things you couldn't run away from. Some things only alcohol could keep at bay.

With a start, Naz realized the man was watching her as intently as she was watching him, his amused smile bracketed by a pair of C-shaped dimples. Caught out, she shifted her gaze from the mirror to his eyes.

"The last time a pretty girl stared at me this hard, my house brothers had written D-I-M-E on my forehead."

Naz reached for her gla.s.s, then remembered it was empty. The jig was up. She abandoned her empty gla.s.s and walked down to the end of the bar. If nothing else, she was pretty sure he was good for a drink.

Up close he was easier to read. His vibe. His energy. He was troubled, sure, but he was also h.o.r.n.y. He was here for a drink, but he'd take something more if it came his way. It just had to be someone he could pretend was as complicated as himself. As-what was the word the beatniks liked?-deep, that was it.