Authors: Gerald Petievich
In Fairfax, Virginia, about thirty minutes out of DC, Powers slowed down and left the highway at Butler Road. Traffic on the opposite side of the highway had been bumper-to-bumper all the way.
Passing through the center of the well-manicured suburban Fairfax, he took a right on Fargo Way, a two-lane, tree-lined road leading past a series of residential cul-de-sacs that all looked the same. After a mile or so, he turned left and climbed a slight grade. Twelve cookie-cutter two-story houses lined a short keyhole-shaped street. The garage door of the third house on the right was up. Herb Kugler was using a table saw.
Powers pulled into the wide driveway, parked, and climbed out of the car carrying an 8 by 11 manila envelope. Kugler, a youthful-looking man of sixty, brushed the OFF switch on the saw and pulled off his glasses.
"Well, look who's here," he said, coming from the garage.
They shook hands warmly. Kugler, a man of medium height, had curly gray hair trimmed short. Though he'd been Chief of the Secret Service Forensics Division for more than thirty years, he looked more like a fit old soldier than a technician, researcher, and author of
The Guide to Modern Police Handguns.
After the assassination of President Kennedy, Kugler, at the behest of the Warren Commission, had been charged with determining whether Oswald, or anyone else, for that matter, could have fired from the window of the Dallas School Book Depository and scored two hits on a passenger seated in a moving convertible limousine.
The meticulous Kugler, enlisting the aid of medical doctors and a famous sculptor, personally constructed a mannequin out of various materials including rubber, soft plastic, and animal bones to the exact size, weight, and anatomical specifications, including brain and tissue density, of President Kennedy.
Re-creating the events of the assassination even down to using the same Secret Service driver who'd driven Kennedy on the day of the assassination, Kugler had positioned himself at the window in the book depository and fired Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher Carcano rifle at the mannequin as the presidential limousine rounded the corner.
The fifty-page article he'd written for the Warren Commission, outlining his experiment and showing the similarity of Kennedy's wounds to those of the mannequin, was considered the most telling evidence to the Commission that Oswald had not only been the assassin but had acted alone.
"I heard about Ken Landry on television," Kugler said. "What happened?"
"Street robbery."
"Ken always carried his piece off duty. I wonder if he got a chance-"
"He got off a couple of shots, but it didn't do him any good."
"Damn. Goddamn. His wife and family-"
"Actually, that's why I'm here, Herb. I'd like you to take a look at some evidence."
"Certainly."
Kugler put his arm around Powers's shoulder and took him through the garage entrance to the kitchen. He led him to a dining room table and turned on a light. Powers took the photo of the spent bullet round from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Kugler. They sat down and Kugler studied the photograph for a long time.
"How's retirement treating you, Herb?"
"I miss the Secret Service, but not some of the people in it," he said, without taking his eyes off the photograph. "Used to be every man in the outfit was on a first-name basis. The politicians respected us. The Service was an elite group. But Director Fogarty is nothing but a damn stooge for the President-any President. And for that matter, any First Lady. The man was born to bow and scrape. I'll bet he's eaten ten thousand miles of shit during his career." He smiled. "It feels good to say that without fear of being transferred to Newark."
Kugler left the table and went to the garage. He returned immediately with a Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glass and a flashlight. Using the glass and the light, he turned the photograph upside down, then sideways, holding it at arm's length.
Finally he set the photo down on the table.
"Is there anything you can tell me other than it's a thirty-eight?" Powers said.
"I'd have to look at the round itself, of course, but from what I can tell by this photo, it looks like there's grating." He pointed. "See here? It looks like the striations have been shaved around the sides a little."
"What could cause that?"
"Shaving is usually evidence of a suppressor of some kind," he said ominously.
"A silencer."
"I'm not positive, but that's what it looks like. Is the Service handling the investigation?"
Powers shook his head. "Metro. It's being handled as a street robbery. That's why I wanted someone else to take a look at the evidence."
"This is something a criminalist might not notice right off the bat. What did Secret Service Forensics Division have to say?"
"I didn't show it to anyone there. Actually I'm no longer an agent, Herb. I took retirement."
"You what?"
"I decided to go out in the big world and try to make some real bucks."
Kugler studied him. "I always figured you for a thirty-year man," he said cautiously.
"I'm involved in this investigation because Ken was my friend."
Kugler's eyes met his. "What's going on, Jack?"
"I don't know exactly," Powers said, reaching into the flight bag. He took out the revolver and removed the newspaper covering it. "I need to know everything you can tell me about this."
Kugler rubbed his thumb across the defaced serial number. "I'll see what I can do,"
"This is a ... political chore relating to the man. So I'd rather you didn't mention-"
"No one will ever know," Kugler said, studying him.
"Thanks, friend," Powers said, coming to his feet.
"Are you in some kind of trouble, Jack?"
"I'm not sure."
"I've never heard of a street robber using a pistol silencer."
"Neither have I," Powers said. Though silencers were frequently evident in television and in motion pictures, they were seldom used in real life.
"Even the Mafia doesn't use them," Kugler said ominously.
"The silencer was invented by the CIA, wasn't it, Herb?"
"It sure as hell was."
****
TWENTY-TWO
At his apartment that night, Powers sat at his kitchen table and pondered what he knew. Doodling, he wrote the words SUSAN
and FRANKFURT on his note pad. Though there was a possibility Winona Alberts had been mistaken when she approached Marilyn at the airport, something, perhaps her levelheaded demeanor, told him to believe her. He took out the baseball team photograph James Chilcott had given him and stared at it for a long time. Having made a decision, he rummaged through a kitchen drawer until he found his American Airlines Advantage Club mileage record. Checking, he saw he had more than enough mileage left for a free round trip to Europe.
He phoned for an airline reservation.
There was a flight leaving in two hours.
Powers arrived in Frankfurt at 10 A.M. the following day. Though there were dark clouds forming to the west, it was warm and the sun was out. During the flight he'd tried to read a newspaper and a
Time
magazine he'd purchased at the airport gift shop, but couldn't keep his concentration.
The aircraft taxied down the runway and came to a stop at the terminal. He waited until all the passengers, tired and grouchy from the long flight, pushed and shoved their way into the jetway. With the aisles clear, he came to his feet and followed them, moving slowly in the crowds through lines at both the customs and the immigration control points. After perfunctory questions by uniformed officials, he was allowed to pass.
At the Hertz desk, he rented a car and, using a city map he found in the glove compartment, maneuvered his way to the autobahn. There he headed north, moving to the right lane frequently as speeding Mercedes Benzes and BMWs, as if to point out he was a foreigner and unaccustomed to traveling at dangerous speeds, pulled up precariously within inches of his rear bumper and blinked headlights for him to clear the way.
At Camp Darby, he pulled up to the guard gate and showed his passport to the military policeman on duty. After the MP on duty had issued him a visitor's pass, he phoned the camp's G-2 office and determined that Sergeant Fuller had just left for lunch at the post exchange cafeteria.
Powers parked his car in the large parking lot in front of the supermarket-sized post exchange and went in. The cafeteria was inside the front door to the right. The place was filled with clusters of enlisted men in camouflage fatigue uniforms and homely, overweight women with young children and babies sitting at Formica-topped tables. The tables were set with plastic flowers, plastic ashtrays, and plastic salt and peppershakers. And, probably because an army special order had been issued stating the walls of all post exchange food facilities would be decorated, framed photographs of out-of-date Indianapolis racecars were hanging here and there. The place was a bedlam of mixed conversations, crying babies, and the rattle of dishes and trays. Entering, Powers wondered for a moment why soldiers would prefer to eat in such a place, as opposed to getting a free meal in a quiet company mess hall. But, as an army veteran, he knew that to soldiers any change in routine was better than an established practice.
Fuller, wearing slacks and a cheap-looking brown corduroy sport coat with an open-collar shirt, was sitting alone at a corner table smoking a filter-tipped cigarette and reading a copy of
Overseas Weekly.
As Powers approached, Fuller came to his feet to shake hands. "What brings you back here?" he said amiably, raising his voice to be heard over the din.
"A couple of loose ends concerning that missing government employee." Powers and Fuller sat down at the table.
"Must be a flap of major proportions," Fuller said.
"What makes you say that?"
"Because you're not the first to do a follow-up," he said with a wry grin. "A few days after I helped you, I was called into the C.O.'s office. He introduces me to Mr. Green and Mr. Jones from Berlin Station, a coupla guys who looked like they just came from a sale at Brooks Brothers," Fuller said facetiously.
"CIA."
"You got that one right, Kemo Sabe," Fuller said.
"What did they want?"
"They questioned me about helping you. At first I thought it was just a routine follow-up, but they were too cagey for it to be routine. If I asked them a question, they would turn it back to me-as if they didn't want to let some big friggin' cat out of the bag. They were particularly interested in your executive order authority and all that. It was definitely unusual."
"Most CIA people are unusual."
"I hear you," Fuller said. He took a big drag to finish his smoke, then snubbed it in the plastic ashtray. "A bunch of goddam eggheads. What the hell is going on?"
"I'm not sure, but I need your help."
"You name it."
"You mentioned something about German intelligence keeping an eye on the Syrian trade mission building. Can you tell me more about that?"
"I've heard the German LfV-that's Landesamt für Verfassungschutz, the German equivalent of our FBI-has a permanent observation post near the trade mission. They film everybody going in or out and keep the members of the mission under surveillance, all four of them, twenty-four hours a day. We share information about what the ragheads are up to."