“Look at this,” McBride said, handing the letter to Adrienne. “It’s incredible.”
He watched Adrienne read for a while, thinking about the way the Institute had used its fellows to explore obscure technologies and practices that could be used in mind control operations (his own study, involving “animist therapeutics” and the Third World was a classic example).
“Jesus,” she whispered. Looked up, and asked, “What’s this about ‘Papa’? Is that his father or… Hemingway?”
“I don’t know,” McBride said. “Right now, I’m more worried about ‘Jericho.’“ His eye fell on the envelope that, earlier, had fallen from between the pages of the same legal pad. Addressed to Calvin Crane, Florida, it had no stamp or return address. Hand delivered, then, McBride thought.
Opening it, he found a single page of unsigned text:
My Dear Cal,
I confess I was shocked by the piety and recklessness of your recent letter, which arrived by mail only yesterday. What were you thinking, to put such things on paper?
Perhaps it is your age that’s made you careless—but is it possible that it has also made you pious? No one needs to remind me of “the first principles” on which this enterprise was founded. I live with them every day, as did my father—as, once, did you.
Neither is it necessary (or desirable) for us to discuss the operation that you have so carelessly mentioned in your letter. Your role in these affairs has long been at an end. I will not discuss events in Africa—or any other activity—with you. On the contrary, it’s apparent that my decision to keep you informed of operations, even after your retirement, was a mistake.
But you are making an even greater mistake when you withhold your signature, approving the annual disbursement of operational funds from the banking facility in Lichtenstein. That two signatures should be required for such disbursements is, as you well know, an anachronism dating back to when the Institute and Clinic were separate entities.
That you should now take advantage of this anomaly to press your own agenda is disgraceful. And not just disgraceful: it is an attack, not only upon the Institute, but on myself. I beg you to reconsider.
McBride turned to Adrienne, who was reading over his shoulder, having already finished the earlier letter, inspiring the one in his hand. “Mamie was right,” he told her.
“About what?” She was still reading.
“The money. Crane had some kind of lock on it. And he was squeezing them.” He let her continue to read until she looked up at him, signaling that she was done. McBride didn’t say anything, but just sat there, looking distracted. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“My fellowship,” he told her. “I’m thinking the whole thing was a sham.”
“Tell me again what—”
“I was studying bush therapies. That’s what it amounted to. Everything from dance frenzies to speaking in tongues.”
“So? I don’t see how any of that would help the program.”
“I do. That’s what it was all about: altered states of consciousness. Drugs, hypnosis, trance states. And not only that, I was encouraged to write about ‘Third World Messiahs’ and ‘mass conversion.’ And I did. I reported on a charismatic faith healer in Brazil, a defrocked priest in Salvador who was said to work miracles, and a Pentecostal politician in… I think it was Belize.”
“So?”
“Someone whacked the faith healer. Shot him onstage when he was up to his elbows in cancer and chicken guts. The newspapers said his killer was nuts.”
“And you think… ?”
“I don’t know what to think,” McBride replied. The two of them sat back on the couch, listening to the rain thrashing against the windows. After a while, he leaned forward and began to put Crane’s papers back in the attaché case. Adrienne got up, and crossed the room to the windows. Looked out.
“It’s letting up,” she said.
McBride nodded, then lingered for a moment over a thick manila envelope—the one with the clippings. In the upper right-hand corner was a notation in what McBride recognized as Crane’s hand: First Reports.
Opening the envelope, he dumped the contents on the table and began to sort through them. It went quickly, at first, then more slowly. Then quickly again. They were newspaper articles—a few of them quite long, some short, most brittle and yellowing with age. There were obituaries of obscure personalities in dozens of countries, and long dispatches about the violent deaths of prominent people throughout the world. Dateline: Rwanda—
Missing?
McBride went through the articles, one by one. Finally, he looked up at Adrienne and asked, “Did you read these?”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”
“These clips.”
There was something in his voice that got her complete attention. “No,” she said, turning to face him. “They’re newspaper clips is all. Why?”
He didn’t answer, at first—just shook his head in disbelief. Then he raised his eyes to hers and said, “I think we just found the Institute’s hit list.”
They copied the names—and there were a lot of names—onto a page of the legal pad, then tore it off and said their good-byes to Mamie. She gave Adrienne a big hug, and asked, with a coy smile, “Did you find your letters, dear?”
Adrienne shook her head. “No,” she told her, and struck with guilt at the woman’s kindness, added, “You know, Mamie, there never were any letters, really. That was just—”
Mamie smiled. “I know,” she said, and squeezed the younger woman’s hand. “But don’t tell me any more. I know what Cal’s friends were like. Just promise me that when you come this way again, you’ll stay for lunch. Is that a deal?”
They shook on it.
Half an hour later, Adrienne and McBride were on Longboat Key, sitting on the veranda of a conch house restaurant that specialized in “Floribbean cuisine.” The air was heavy with the aromas of charcoal steaks, olive oil, and old money. Ceiling fans turned overhead, but only barely. The sign on the door read CA D’EUSTACE.
They ate by candlelight—fresh pompano, washed down with a bottle of cold Sancerre. By then, the rain had stopped, and the air was clear, fresh, and cool. Nearby, they could hear the surf, murmuring in the darkness.
“I don’t know half these names,” Adrienne said, looking at the list. “I mean, who’s this first one: Forrestal?”
“I think he was… what? The first Secretary of Defense. Had some kind of psychotic break—thought people were after him.”
“And what happened to him?” Adrienne asked.
“Fell out a window at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Top floor. They named an aircraft carrier after him.”
Adrienne grimaced. “And Lin Biao?”
“Chinese guy,” McBride said.
“That would have been my guess, too,” she told him.
He took the sarcasm in stride. “It’s not a guess. I know this. He was Mao’s second in command. Very bad man. Died in a plane crash.”
She was impressed. “I know the next one,” Adrienne said. “Faisal. He was a Saudi prince, or something.”
“King,” McBride corrected. “He organized the Arab oil embargo. Nephew shot him in a receiving line. I remember reading about it: the king was standing there, waiting to be kissed on the nose—”
“What!?”
“Local custom. Anyway, his nephew waits his turn and, when it comes, he passes up the kiss and shoots him in the head. Instead.” McBride paused, remembering. “The kid was a student at San Francisco State and, after the murder, everyone said he was out of his mind—even the Saudis. Then they realized they couldn’t execute him if he was crazy. So they changed their minds, decided he was fine, and cut off his head.”