The Myanmar Agreement, Part II

THE MYANMAR AGREEMENT, PART II

I had to fly over to Tampa where the President was speaking—that was Monday the eighteenth. I needed to see the security procedures. They were very lax, pathetic really. There would be no excuse to fail due to anything the opposition had to offer.
As late as two days before the President’s visit to Dallas, I was still looking at other possibles, but Oswald was my best hope. By the time I met up with him again on Wednesday night--no tail, no wire—he’d seen a diagram of the motorcade route in the local papers. He was calm, very sure of himself, and high on his own ideas.

"Lee, your plan’s way too heavy on risk," I said after hearing him out. "Maybe some of your co-workers will stay in the building. Even one guy hangs around on the sixth floor and you're out of business."
"I can do it, sir," he responded urgently, annoyed with me again. "Those a-holes are like sheep, following each other around all the time and none of them can turn down some no-boss street time. I can slip my rifle in easy and rig up the sniper's nest in the corner. Even if someone strays in, I won't get seen."
On the immediate strategy for getting away from the Depository, he was adamant. "I ditch the rifle and take the back stairs to the lunch room on the second floor," he said. "I stop to get a bottle of pop. If anyone comes lookin', they pass me by. I wait a minute and then go down to the main floor and out the front door."
His plan made sense only on an extremely short-term basis. Yes, he would have good sight lines, incredible really, if all went well, but would he actually get out of the building? Beyond that, of course, he stood absolutely no chance of avoiding identification, especially since he insisted on using his Carcano.
Most people who believe that Oswald was picked for the operation assume that his job at the Depository had to be a factor--not true at all. I wanted him to set up near the Trade Mart, where the motorcade was to end. I’d identified a spot just off the Stemmons Freeway, in a clump of trees on a small hill with a clear view of the arrival site. I would be in the car, hidden off a ramp, ready to pick him up as soon I heard gunfire. We'd be out of the area before there was any response--a much better plan. At the Depository, I could have the car nearby, but would it matter?
We argued for a long time and I finally gave in, not because I actually agreed, but because Oswald got rattled by anything other than his own ideas. We came to a compromise of sorts. He would use the sixth floor as his base, keeping his weapon concealed, but if he had any company at all, he would shift to a floor above or below, foregoing the sniper’s nest in the interest of completing the operation.
"When you come out of the building," I told him, "go left to the corner, away from the Plaza. I'll find you. If you're not there within five minutes after you shoot, I'll go to the back-up point. If you're caught, we'll take care of your family, but you'll be on your own then."
Oswald agreed, solemnly promising that if he didn't get away, he would protect my identity. Despite my misgivings, using the Depository might actually be a plus, I knew, making the whole thing look like a crime of opportunity when he was identified.
.

* *

I met with Oswald again on the day before the assassination, Thursday, November two-one. He sat next to me at the counter of a coffee shop in the early morning. As planned, we traded some meaningless small talk, nothing of substance, except that the exchange was a signal that everything was on track.
That night I looked in at the Carousel Club. Ruby was on stage, working as the emcee and doing better than the paid version. I gave him a nod when the spotlight panned the audience and then left.
In the morning, I switched cars, using the Gideon Travis ID in case Oswald got picked up and had the Conrad plate number in memory.
I followed the President's day on the car radio. I paced myself and took up position on Houston Street around the side of the Depository, about thirty yards from the corner, the car headed away. My watch said twelve twenty-five. In less than five minutes, I saw the motorcade enter Dealey Plaza. I didn’t see the President. I was thinking that I should have. Then I heard the shots—three shots. I had no doubt where they came from.
People were running in every direction, mostly out of the Plaza. Sirens were blasting--motorcycles racing. A young woman passed by me. They're shooting at the President, she yelled at me through tears. I waited in the car, listening to the radio. The announcer was panicked, almost hysterical and totally out of real information. Maybe three minutes later, I saw Oswald. He was at the corner, alone. I got out of the car. He spotted me. I motioned to him. He looked directly at me, then all around and back at me. He moved a few steps toward me and then stopped. I continued to motion to him. He started to turn away, holding for a second, making a gesture with his hands that I didn't understand, but didn’t take as hostile. Then he went back to the street that fronted the Depository and turned east, away from the Plaza. I had to let him go. I had no idea what he was doing, but he was right in a way. By avoiding me, he extended his life by most of two days.
I drove toward the back-up point, a bus stop out on the Lancaster Road. I wanted to give Oswald the chance to meet up with me if he changed his mind. On the radio, reports were coming through that the President had been shot. Just after one-thirty, I learned that he was dead. Before I had to decide whether to risk a direct pass on the bus stop, the radio had the news that a suspect had been picked up in a cop killing in Oak Cliff. I figured Oswald was out of commission.
Do you know what he was thinking when he avoided you? Tyne asked.
Well, look what he did. We all know he hopped on a bus, then got rattled when it got stuck in traffic and took a cab to his rooming house. It seems like he only went to his place to get a handgun, but he used up his getaway time--a description that fit him was broadcast about fifteen minutes after the assassination. From what I've seen, I'd say that when Officer Tippit stopped him, he was walking toward a bus stop, trying to make his way to the back-up point and that he was planning to meet up with me.
Why the gun?
I can only speculate. When Oswald went to work that morning, he was a nobody--even he had to know that--and when he walked out of the Book Depository, he must have started to be overwhelmed by what he’d done. He was now a hero of the Cuban Revolution, or maybe a chump, and I think he started to sense the potential for the negative. Having a gun on him again would give the hero option a positive boost in his mind. He would think like that.
What did you do after he was captured?
I followed the news reports, driving around Dallas. Oswald would crack at some point--claiming he was the point man for a Cuban wet team that never was--and the Conrad identity might eventually be discovered, but that should have led to a dead end. I'd paid cash for the rental cars and backed the heavy deposits with phony credit cards....Oswald didn’t have a chance to get the plate number off the Travis car and I hadn't left any prints anywhere. Still, I had a live witness, and Raphael would expect maximum damage control.
I had no plan, but I went to scout out the situation. I got into the police headquarters, where Oswald was being held, using the Travis identification. I was issued a press pass. Not surprising--the headquarters was a sieve. Fidel Castro himself could have gotten in there. I hung around the pressroom on the third floor, listening to the locals tell Texas stories and soaking up the rumors, most of which said that Oswald wasn't admitting anything. I left the building to get a meal and I was issued another press pass when I came back. Castro could have gotten Che Guevera into the place....I thought about that at the time.


* *

Hours later, I was watching the scene on the third floor when I heard a familiar voice--raspy, tired, passionate--Jack Ruby. He was talking to another man down the hall from the entrance to the pressroom. Oswald was being interrogated in a captain's office further down the hall. The place was packed, but Jack had carved out a spot in a jumble of TV equipment. His back was to me, but he was talking hard. I wedged myself into position near him, looking the other way and listening. He was going on about what he called the tragedy.
"... and I asked them why, why would they print that rotten ad today, today of all days...disgusting, lousy bastards. And is there really a Bernard Weissman, I demanded to know, and all they could say is that they take the money. At least the Herald didn't carry it, thank God."
"What difference, Jack?"
"They're gonna connect that garbage to what happened today. The Jews are gonna get hurt, that's the dif--"
"Whadda ya doin' here, Jack?"
The new voice came from a man who had gone by me, moving down the hall. The man continued on, not pausing for an answer from Ruby.
"HELPING THE PRESS, HENRY," Ruby yelled down the hall at the man's back. "That's Henry Wade, the D.A., good friend of mine," he told his companion.
"They'll fry this bastard," Ruby’s companion said.
"Yeah, but what a black mark for Dallas, and poor Jackie, she'll have to come back here for the trial...and the kids, what an unspeakable horror."
I continued to listen to Jack's outpourings until an announcement was made that there would be a press conference in the basement assembly room in twenty minutes. Oswald would be there. I wouldn't. Before I left the building, I found a copy of the other Dallas paper, the Morning News, printed before the assassination. The ad that had set Ruby off had been placed by a group calling itself "The American Fact-Finding Committee". Bernard Weissman was listed as the chairman. I noted the black border around the ad.
The content was the routine Kennedy is a communist tool line, amateurishly presented, but I was struck by one point near the bottom of the text. Weissman wanted to know why the "C.I.A. is arranging coups and having staunch Anti-Communist Allies of the U.S. bloodily exterminated."

* *

I was at police headquarters the next morning. Apparently, Oswald still wasn't talking. He was scheduled to be transferred to the county jail at 4:00 p.m., but that was cancelled. Later, the press was told that the move wouldn't occur until the next morning. Just before 8:00 p.m., the chief made an announcement, stating that the transfer would start at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday. The chief promised that the press would have photo access to Oswald as he was being moved. From what I’d seen, I believed him. The word around the pressroom was that the police were going out of their way not to antagonize the news people, to try and keep the heat off themselves. And the consensus among the locals was that access to the transfer had to mean that Oswald was going to be brought out through the basement, the only exit point that could accommodate the crowd....I finally had the start on a plan.
I went by the Carousel Club--it was closed down. Ruby had told me he lived in an apartment complex, also out in Oak Cliff. I got the address from the phone book. I called and got a guy who said he was the roommate--Ruby was out. I decided to intercept him. He arrived home just after midnight.

“Jack," I said softly through the open window of my car as he approached his front door, "Jack, come and talk to me."
Ruby appeared to be emotionally drained and he offered no objection to having me drive him around in the dark night, only asking to stop once so that he could use a pay phone to check on his sister, ailing he said. Mostly I let him talk, waiting for him to complain that the Jews were going to suffer. Finally, he did. I could tell he was about to mention the ad in the Morning News. I wasn't going to let that happen.
I quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road. "Jack, you got it," I said emphatically. "You got it all backwards, but you still got it."
"Whadda you mean?"
"You're disgusted--the Jews will get blamed for the assassination, right?"
"Damn right!"
"So am I, Jack...and that's what's supposed to happen. Listen carefully, some schlepp named Bernard Weissman has been set up to take the fall. He’s the jerk who placed an anti-Kennedy advertisement in the paper yesterday.”
“I saw that piece of--”
“Doesn’t matter, listen to me, the fix is in. Oswald doesn't know it, but he was meant to get caught. He's going to string this thing out, waiting for help he's sure is coming--make Jackie and the kids suffer real bad—but just after his trial starts, he'll get the word that he's been abandoned. Then, like the lowlife he is, he's going to spill his guts, telling the truth as he knows it.”
I turned the interior lights on and looked hard at Ruby before continuing. He seemed alert enough.
“Oswald thinks he was run by some pro-Castro Cubans out of New Orleans,” I said. “He's got names, that's the key. The people he gives over will look to be long gone, but then out of the blue, the FBI will to get a tip. They're going to pick up one of the Cubans and nail him solid on Oswald's testimony. The Cuban will get the same treatment that Oswald got and, like the FBI guys are all geniuses, he's eventually going to talk, giving over what he thinks is the truth, that the whole Castro thing is a crock and that Oswald was a patsy, that the Cubans weren't political at all, that they were hired by a group out of Dallas. The Cuban won't have any real names from the Dallas people and the trail will go cold for awhile, but the evidence will slowly start building. J. Edgar will be given every chance to strut his stuff. By the time the G-men are finished, the whole meshuga chain of evidence will very convincingly lead back to the ultimate schlemiel, this guy Weissman, and a bunch of our own crazies...Zionist right-wingers."
I stopped, letting the apparently exhausted Ruby absorb the data. He asked me to run it through again and I did. He then put his hand on my arm and spoke, one word. "Why?"
"Jack," I answered, "our people have enemies, that's the way it's always been. I can't tell you more...and I can't act."
"Why not?"
"I was sent here to stop this thing if I could," I answered. "Without this bastard Oswald to nail down the first connection, the story falls apart, but I failed and I can't risk being identified."
Jack Ruby went through a painful-looking thought process before speaking again.
"Can I help?" he offered finally.
I hesitated, letting him repeat himself before turning to him and putting my hand on his shoulder.
"Jack, have you ever heard of a nigger killing?" I asked.

* *

The accepted wisdom is that Jack Ruby was a violent, asocial imitation of a real man. The people who knew Jack don't agree with that at all. Ask them--some of them are still around. There was absolutely nothing in Jack's background that would type him as a guy who would go off the deep end. The Warren Commission actually manufactured stories about Jack's allegedly violent nature--like how he chased his partner, Joe Bonds, down an alley one night, pistol blazing. Good story. One of my people spoke to Joe Bonds in New York in 1974--he had the pistol and Ruby did the running--and that's the statement he gave to the Commission. Look in the record for his statement--you won't find it--all that's there is a hearsay affidavit from an FBI agent who reverses the true story. Sure, Jack Ruby was a scrapper, acted as his own bouncer and wasn't afraid to use his fists, but he was no wild man. The actual facts just didn't fit the profile of Ruby that the Commission wanted. I’ve always been amazed that, with the almost universal belief that the Warren Commission was trying very hard not to find a conspiracy of any type, that no one outside of the Commission ever looked harder, no one ever looked at the man Jack Ruby and said, This story makes no sense. Where's the motive?
The truth is that what Jack Ruby did, he did for the best of motives--killing the handcuffed Oswald was no act of demented cowardice. But the Warren Commission, for reasons that were understandable, like not wanting to get into a war if the Russians or the Cubans were involved, was afraid to dig too deep and took the easy way out....That fit my agenda.
After I got out of Dallas, I never gave Oswald another thought, but I followed up on Jack Ruby as much as I could. I’m going to explain November 24, 1963 from his viewpoint. I was only a bit player that day anyway.

* *

Jack Ruby is up early for a Sunday morning, readying himself for his phone to ring--two full rings is the signal--communication is to be by phone rings, augmented by TV and radio reports, unless there is a change of plans. He has thirty minutes from the signal to be on site, no more, no less.
Gideon--probably not his real name, but he has given no other and so Gideon will have to do--said as they drove the streets that security could be tight for the transfer. Jack countered that he is in solid with the police and that he got into the headquarters on Friday night without being questioned. Gideon acted impressed, but proposed a back-up strategy. He was concerned that if Jack has to wait long inside headquarters, he might be noticed by a member of a beefed-up security detail and be asked to leave. Whatever the situation, the timing has to be precise.
Jack feeds his dog, Sheba, part of the plan. Normally he takes Sheba down to the Carousel for food.
In Texas, there was a form of homicide that doesn't get described in the law books. A nigger killing, the street term for a murder without malice, does not have to involve a black person and cannot involve a black if the victim is white. The nigger killing term refers to the taking of life without premeditation and for a decent motive. The motive factor can be supplemented by a myriad of personal considerations, but at the center there must be a victim who rightfully earns no sympathy from the jury. Both of the elements must be present, Jack knows, and everything he is doing will to be geared toward establishing his end of the relevant criteria.
Jack looks at his watch--8:25--too early. His roommate, George Senator, is not in the apartment--doing his laundry downstairs as he often does on a Sunday morning--but he will be back by nine or so. In normal course, George will be around until the exit scene. He is to be a witness to Jack's distress.
The phone rings at 8:30. On the third ring, he answers. Thinking quickly, he talks nonsense, bringing his cleaning lady, Elnora Pitts, into the ambit of his defense. She would later testify at the Warren Commission, He sounded just terrible strange to me...there was something wrong with him the way he was talking to me.
He reads the newspaper, checking on the entertainment ads. He has shut down his businesses for the weekend, closing the Carousel and his other club, the Vegas, the one that his ill sister usually runs. He has acted out of respect for the assassinated President, no other motive. All of the other Dallas nightspots have stayed open, hoping to cash in on the influx of humanity into the city. He is disgusted.
George comes back as he is reading a letter in the paper addressed to Caroline Kennedy. He wants his roommate to know his pain.
At his urging, George reads the letter and expresses sympathy for the young girl, outrage at Oswald.
Jack is into a balancing act, a common problem in a nigger killing—risking the specter of premeditation as he seeks to bolster the decent motive.
"If something happened to this Oswald,” he says, “then Mrs. Kennedy won't have to come back for the trial,” repeating a thought Senator has heard all around Dallas, but not from Jack Ruby until then.
George Senator will later describe that morning to the Warren Commission, The way he talked...he was even mumbling, which I didn't understand...he was pacing the floor from the living room to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the living room...His lips were going. What he was jabbering I don't know. But he was really pacing.
Jack Ruby will believe he'd done better, that his roommate downplayed his evident distress in a misguided attempt at helping a friend.
George does the usual pro forma, asking permission before turning on the TV. Jack consents as always--but with a grunt, not words--and paces to his room to switch off the radio that he has been monitoring. He listen for a moment, confirming the feeling he has been getting from the broadcasts that the transfer will be delayed. He returns and heads for the kitchen, waiting for the two rings. He knows that his roommate will not upset the plan by answering the phone while he is home. George Senator is an evictee from a bad marriage and out of work. He cannot contribute to the rent, cannot pay for the food he eats, and is not asked to do so. He truly appreciates Jack's generosity, as have many others in the Dallas area whose lives have crossed paths with Jack Ruby.
By 9:30, Jack is fully dressed. He prepares a plate of scrambled eggs and sits down in front of the TV. He makes noises that he thinks convey internal torment, noting as he does so that the announcer is still discussing the Oswald transfer as a future event. He rises and gets a half-grapefruit. He has ignored the eggs--nice touch--but he eats the fruit.
He begins to fidget in earnest. His schedule has at least ten minutes of margin so that George will not connect the two rings to his departure, but he has to do something other than stumble around and act deranged. The ride to police headquarters will not take twelve minutes, probably no more than ten.
He is recombing his thinning hair when the phone rings at 10:19. Again on the third ring, he answers. One of his girls, Little Lynn a/k/a Karen Bennett Carlin, is at home in Fort Worth and needs money, caught short by Jack’s refusal to allow her to display her body for profit, at least not until Monday night. He is abrupt with the young woman, but quickly agrees to wire her twenty-five dollars, not unusual. He does not actually believe that will happen on his watch, but he has to free up the phone. As he hangs up, he chides himself for his inappropriate normalcy with Little Lynn, thankful that George is intent on the TV and has not been paying attention to him.
Time drags. He knows that he has been asked to sacrifice himself for a higher good and he is immensely pleased that he will do so without disclosure of his purpose. Random chance has offered him the opportunity for a form of martyrdom, kinship with the splendid Zealots at Massada and with the Maccabees at Beth-horon, but the world will never know his sacrifice and he is determined all the more for that.
In a groove now, he throws George a series of heavy mutterings as he paces back and forth in front of the TV, still waiting. He goes to his room and sneaks a listen to his favorite station, KLIF--no stirrings at police headquarters yet.
George abandons the TV for the shower and Jack monitors the TV, waiting.
At 10:50 the phone rings twice and cuts off. He holds a minute to eliminate the chance of error, but he is fully ready. George is still in the shower and would not have heard the ringing with the bathroom door closed. No point to further delay, no margin needed.
"George," he calls through the bathroom door, "I'm taking the dog to the club."
As he speeds over familiar Dallas streets on the three-mile trip downtown, he runs through the facts that show that he is acting on impulse: an animal lover, he will leave Sheba in the car, seemingly unfed, something that he would never do in ordinary course, particularly if he is about to wind up in police custody; he is impulsive and emotional by nature, known around Dallas for an intense sense of empathy, a trait which he realizes can cause him to be seen as being too involved in other people's affairs, but which is a positive under the present circumstances; he has been articulating his honest distress at the First Lady's plight and his total loathing for Oswald all weekend, but he has made no overtly violent statements; the morning has gone very well so far--he has been credible. And the delay helps; he should have missed the transfer and thus the opportunity--he will arrive over an hour after the announced start time and hopefully while the transfer is actually in progress; his .38 is legal and often carried when he is handling payroll, as he has been since early Saturday morning; and had he actually planned on becoming a killer, he could easily have made his move at the police headquarters on Friday night when Oswald--in front of a slew of witnesses--passed within two feet of his spot in the hall on the way to the press conference. He has spoken about the negative effect of the assassination on the Jews, but not widely--one mistake is okay. He is solid on the impulsiveness factor.
As to the decency of his motive, the truth cannot be used, but he is confident that he has what a Texas jury will want--he will be killing the man who killed the President and doing so to spare the First Lady and her children further pain.
He is a man about to snap, albeit on cue.
The longest sentence Texas permits in a no malice murder, done right, is five years, he knows. This Gideon person, no Texan he is sure, understands the ways of the Lone Star State.
Today he parks less than a block from the police headquarters just nine minutes after starting his car. He fumbles with his payroll money for a couple of minutes, counting out the cash that will be found in his jacket pocket, and then checks his watch--11:09. He doesn't want to spend the time in the car and he remembers Little Lynn. Western Union has an office just across the street. He was wrong and glad for it. Little Lynn may not have to wait to get groceries and to pay down her rent after all.
He enters the Western Union office at 11:12 and finishes his business at 11:17, inserting the time-stamped receipt in his pocket.
He slowly starts on the short walk back to the police headquarters, pacing himself lest he arrive early. He will enter the basement by the down ramp off Main Street, sure to be less guarded than the up ramp on the other side. He has Gideon's extra press pass, but he will try to gain entry on his own. This point was discussed at length in the early morning as he and Gideon ran through the route. Gideon does not believe that the police have a record of the holders--and the passes carry no names--but better not to push the point. Jack will keep the pass concealed in his pocket, for use only if necessary. Whatever happens, the pass will be on its way back to its former bearer as soon as Jack gets inside the basement. Getting caught with such a document on his person could smack of premeditation.
He crosses the street, glancing at his watch--11:18--and moves to the top of the down ramp. He sees a police car--no passengers other than the uniformed driver--coming wrong way up the ramp, the sole guard guiding its progress into the street as it cautiously turns into the traffic against the flow. He does not stop. He moves onto the ramp and is in the basement without challenge. The time is an almost perfect 11:19. He is notorious among his friends for lateness--not today. He smiles to himself as he stoops to put the unused press pass in a gym bag that Gideon has left just inside the door. Then he moves down toward the center. He sees three vehicles idling on the up ramp. There are more cops in the basement than newsmen, over a hundred people in all, but nothing is happening. He takes a position between the bottom car on the up ramp and the elevator, waiting again.
At 11:21 a.m., Lee Harvey Oswald is shot to death by Jack Ruby.

* *

More than anything, Ruby's timing--arriving in the basement so soon before Oswald was brought out--let the Warren Commission believe that they were dealing with an impulse killing, but Ruby's part in the timing wasn't difficult. He had thirty minutes for fifteen minutes of movement.
How could you be sure of the timing on your end? Tyne asked.
Not a big deal....When I got to headquarters on Sunday morning, I went to the lieutenant who was assigned to handle the press. I told him that my camera crew had just arrived in town, that they were sacked-out in a motel and that I had to have some lead-time. I tried to get an hour and settled for forty-five minutes. I kept after him all morning, polite but persistent. He gave me the word at 10:49 to bring my crew in fast. He cut the timing too close, but I took care of that.
What do you mean?
Oswald was in the captain's office on the third floor all morning. They had him ready to leave for the basement just before 11:15. I was there, watching from down the hall. There would be a photo session in the basement, but Ruby might miss out. Some of the reporters could see Oswald through a window to the captain's office and the word was that he was dressed in a scruffy T-shirt and jeans. I went to the liaison, suggesting that the image was wrong from the Department's prospective. He agreed and told the chief. That bought me the few minutes I needed while they got Oswald a decent shirt and a sweater....Of course, that wasn't my only option--a phone call to the chief, like from the Justice Department in Washington, or pulling a fire alarm would've done just as well. Remember, I was a professional, these things aren't hard.
Jack Ruby went to trial and received a death sentence. What went wrong?
Human error, plain and simple....Jack started out with the best lawyer in Texas for a no malice defense, a guy named Tom Howard, and that defense was a natural, but Melvin Belli, the famous tort lawyer, wanted the case. Belli convinced Jack to go for broke and plead insanity, promised him no jail time and a quick release from the hospital after some chemical treatment. Belli won out and the case was tried on the theory that Jack suffered from something called psychomotor epilepsy. The medical evidence was a joke and the jury didn't buy the story. Belli wasn't a Texan and he was pushing too hard. But that verdict was thrown out on appeal. A new trial was set and Belli was off the case. Jack would finally go the no malice route, even if he was hedging his bet toward the end, acting totally whacked out, but as we know he died of cancer in early 1967, before the second trial took place.
Is it fair to state that you abandoned Jack Ruby after November 24, 1963?
I don't think so, no, not at all....You should know that he wouldn't take any money. I would've given him everything I had with me and more later, but Jack wanted nothing, just the chance to do the right thing as he saw it. We got offers of help to him later and pleaded with him to get rid of Belli and stay with the game plan. The only things he would take from us were for other people.
Like what?
No, you don't need that information.

* *

On the tape, Ward continued on, explaining his movements after Ruby was arrested. He flew to D.C. and stayed with Morgan Pape until he rotated back to South Vietnam. He was explaining his report to Raphael and Andrews, and Tyne tuned out the voice. There would be no new information on Pape or the defector Golitsyn. Tyne thought Meyers would have to make an adjustment, but the professor was not satisfied.
Tyne took the problem to his expert, another Lee Seng contact, an old CIA hand. Further checking showed that Golitsyn had been covered by several minders. The Agency’s paranoia was such that a whole squad of CIA agents was assigned to catalogue Golitsyn's grandiose theories. That any information was sourced to the Russian defector meant nothing in identifying a specific CIA agent at Langley. Tyne told Meyers he was in the clear. The book was to be ready within a year or so. Thomas Andrews would be permitted to read the final draft, to request changes to any material that might compromise the identities, but Tyne had the final say under the Myanmar Agreement.
Two weeks later, Blake Ward collapsed at his home in Los Angeles. He died the next morning. His funeral was well attended. Marc Raphael and Thomas Andrews saw to it that the senior Rawaan personnel all came in to pay final respects. Raphael himself made the trip to his adopted and abandoned country, again accepting the risk that Tyne would find cause to break his word.
Tyne had called on Blake Ward shortly before his death. Ward had expressed what Tyne took to be genuine regret over the Kennedy assassination. But he also expressed a great admiration for his partners, Marc Raphael and Thomas Andrews. He admitted what Tyne had already assumed, that he had sponsored Tyne’s investigation—he would not be seen as going directly against Raphael, but he would not allow himself to die without trying to make some meaningful reckoning with his past.
Tyne came to understand why he had been selected to conduct the investigation. He had lost more than half of his men on the mission at Tet 1968. That event had been the defining moment of his life. Ward had the resources could learn that, given the chance, Tyne would get to the truth. And he had a skill that Ward wanted. Tyne was a negotiator, a deal maker. He would find a way to balance the need for clarification against the force of Raphael’s will.
The primary beneficiary of Blake Ward's estate, an amount in the hundreds of millions, was a hospital facility just outside of L.A. in Westminster. Even Raphael was impressed. Westminster has the highest concentration of ethnic Vietnamese of any municipality in the United States.
Blake Ward will be remembered for awhile near the place of his death for an act of charity. That will change over time.
William Tyne finally went on trial in New York County Supreme Court, Criminal Division, Part 45 at 100 Centre Street. Public interest in the event was minimal. The results would get reported, but the trial itself was sparsely attended.
Thomas Andrews, expected to be the lead witness for the People, had not been subpoenaed because of his status. On the first day of the trial, he abruptly left the country to travel to Myanmar, claiming that he had gotten a message that Marc Raphael, the last of his partners, had suffered a brain seizure and was not expected to survive. The “message” was a fiction.
But without the sense of direct victimization that Thomas Andrews and his stature could offer, the prosecutor was stuck with a lifeless case.
Two of the Rawaan security people who were allegedly at the scene of the break-in were called. They had supposedly detained Tyne at the Rawaan offices, but they could not positively identify him in court. They both thought the man that they had dealt with was younger by a few years.
Another witness, an ex-Rawaan employee and alleged accomplice, begrudgingly identified Tyne, but only after he was impeached by his prior sworn statement to the prosecutor, and he still managed to contradict the prior statement in part, claiming for the first time to have been recruited to the scheme by a man he knew only as Morgan Pape and could no longer locate. He used the true name of the Pape persona, but that name meant nothing to the prosecutor or to any of the law enforcement personnel involved in the case. The name was no more than an assemblage of letters in the unread transcript of the case.
Tyne had insisted on the conceit. As his present was tumbling into confinement and inevitable disbarment, he was looking to his future.
Had he mounted any sort of a defense, he would have had a chance, but none was forthcoming and the jurors honored their oaths. Detective Ed Fagan was present when the guilty verdict came in. He thought that Tyne might have an interesting story to tell him to avoid prison.
He was wrong.
But Tyne did have a story to tell, in another forum. He’d used up the “modest exception” that he had negotiated in Myanmar and was writing his own coda to Professor Meyers’ “fictional” work-in-progress. He called it The Myanmar Agreement and intended to have it published through a blind, as soon as he got out of prison.