Prologue (39 page)

“In the Resistance?”
Ginter asked.

She shook her head. “Insurance adjusting,” she said.

Ginter exhaled deeply. “Back in ‘04 during the Balkans War we were outside of a Greek town called Porti. It’s in the mountains. It was all hilly to the west and there’s a wooded plain to the east. There was a mobile Russkie command post directing artillery that had been clobbering us. We had tried to get a bead on the radio transmissions but they were keeping them real brief and this guy kept moving around.”

Ginter guided the Corvette out and around a tractor-trailer truck before continuing.

“We had a plan called ‘one, two, three zap.’ Basically, I take a squad and circle around to the west and enter the town just after dawn. It would look like we had arrived late because of the hills rather than attacking at night, as they would have expected. The subterfuge only has to last a few minutes and we figured they’d counter-attack the probe. Then we’d attack with a full platoon from the east so the Russkies would think that the west was a feint. At that point, their command would take full control of the defense and should start ordering a full redeployment to defend the real attack from the east. And in that momentary flurry of redirection orders we had a ‘copter loaded to lock on to the surge in radio traffic and track a missile into the transmission point and, hopefully, take out the whole C and C.”

Ginter took a deep breath. He kept his eyes on the road. Pamela remained turned toward him, saying nothing.

“Anyway, that was the plan,” Ginter continued. “I came in with a squad on time and there was no perimeter guard.
Nothing.
We crept into town and I saw a courtyard with a dinky antenna in the window of a building behind a stone wall. There was no gate but we scoped it and still didn’t see anything so I went over the wall.
Still nothing.
Then through these French doors I see the whole fucking
Russkie
Command
Center
including a fat General with his feet up on a desk talking on a regular phone. I figure there have to be guards up the yin-yang. I figure I’m about to die in a hale of bullets. But no one looked up. There was no time to get anyone else without alerting every Russian. I didn’t even have a grenade on me, just my M-16.”

Ginter was gripping the steering wheel hard and sweat beaded on his forehead. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.

“There was no time, and nowhere else to go. I kicked open the doors. It looked like it had been a café. The general turned and started to say something and I lowered the M-16 and put one in his mouth and then I sprayed the room. Three guys burst open a door from a balcony and I sprayed them too. In less than a minute it was all over and there was no need for the ‘copter. I called in my guys and we blew up the room and that was it.”

Ginter took a deep breath. “For maybe 45 seconds of hosing down a room I got a medal from the Greek government. We counted eight dead Russian soldiers. And in those 45 seconds I wasn’t scared. Not one bit.
Didn’t shake afterwards.
Crazy and adrenaline rushed all over the place, but not scared. Just blew the room and left.”

Ginter swerved back into the right lane, slowed the Corvette, and swiveled to look at Pamela. “Last night was different,” he said. “Last night I was damn scared.”

Chapter 18

On Friday morning,
August 9, 1963
Lewis Ginter sat in his car outside the
New Orleans
train station. In the 84 hours since the
Virginia
motel incident, whenever he and Pamela were hungry, Ginter remained in the car and dispatched Pamela on a run of shops for sandwiches, chips and sodas. Bathroom breaks had been harder. Ginter had flinched when he first saw a “Colored” restroom, while Pamela had confidently strode past into the one marked, “Whites Only.”

Buying the Corvette had been rash.
Registering it with
New Hampshire
license plates before driving into the South compounded the error.
Although he had not yet been stopped by the police for being black-in-a-Corvette, he chastised himself for his lack of forethought. He compensated by only driving at night, or by having Pamela drive while he remained slouched in the passenger seat. He had resolved that if stopped and threatened with arrest he would shoot his way out of it. But that determination had not been comforting. Shooting a white police officer would have left him on the wrong end of a manhunt.

Ginter wondered if traversing back in time had eroded his intellectual or cognitive ability.

“It’s all screwed up,” he kept telling himself. “That’s all it is. Everything is messed up and you’re just not thinking clearly.” He resolved to dump the Corvette.

Across the street, a black shoeshine boy stood outside the terminal. The kid looked about 14 and Ginter mentally calculated that by 2026 he would be about 77. He wondered if he would still be alive, an African-American elder living in
New Orleans
. He toyed with the idea that when he got back to
Cambridge
he would travel to
New Orleans
and find the man, until he remembered that Hurricane Katrina had displaced most of the city’s black population.

Seeing no police, Ginter exited the Corvette and approached the youngster. He asked him for directions to Canal and St. Charles Streets. After getting them he retreated to the car.

Pamela had spent the last three days trying to talk Ginter out of shooting Lee. She had repeatedly emphasized that he would get caught. Driving the Corvette out of
New Orleans
would be impossible. The police wouldn’t arrest him; they’d just gun down the nigger who had shot the white guy. And even if he were arrested no defense would stop his eventual execution.
And for what?
Just so
maybe
Ché Guevara would get killed in
Bolivia
? Did Lewis want to throw his life away on a plan that might possibly thwart one small piece of the Communist initiative? Besides, Pamela argued in summary, what if someone else saved Ché anyway?

“You won’t get away with it,” she said. “And it probably won’t work. So why do it?”

But she had stuck with him. She hadn’t asked to leave the car at any of a number of way stops. Here in
New Orleans
, she was with him still.

When she emerged from the terminal with hotdogs and open soda bottles he checked his watch. If he had calculated it correctly, he would be there in plenty of time.

He hoped he had the date right. He was sure he remembered correctly. But what if the little weasel himself had been wrong? Or worse, had lied?

He checked his watch again, and then cursed himself for doing so. Was he coming apart? On the street, passers-by ignored him.
A good sign.

He turned and got in the driver’s seat as Pamela circled around and got in on the passenger side.

“I’ll drive,” was all he said before gobbling the cool hot dog. He ignored the offered soda.

It took them eight minutes to reach the corner of Canal and
St. Charles
. He pulled into a parking space with a clear view of the street corner. He switched off the engine and used his left elbow to subtly check beneath his oversized brown cotton sport coat. He shook his head. Nerves, Lewis. He wondered when the last time was that he had checked for a sidearm.
Greece
, it was
Greece
.

No one was at the corner. Ginter’s heart sank. Had he arrived too late, or too early, or did the weasel have the wrong date after all?

I always knew Lee was an idiot, he thought. He considered that the incident might never have happened but had simply been manufactured for the memoirs. How am I going to track him then? Where can I pick him up?

And then, diagonally across the intersection, he saw him, dressed in a white short sleeve shirt, a placard hanging around his neck. He was approaching pedestrians, offering them small white pamphlets. He tried to read the placard when the man turned toward him, but he was too far away. “The Hero of Acapulco,” Ginter mumbled disgustedly.
Got you.

For a moment he considered approaching the pamphleteer and making contact but decided against blowing his cover. He contemplated removing the loaded Colt from under his arm, dashing across the street, and blowing out the man’s brains-what there were of them.

Pamela stared at him apprehensively. He was sweating profusely and could feel the stickiness under his starched white collar.

“Damn, no air conditioning,” he joked, but she didn’t smile. She kept looking at him.

Pamela reached down to the floor and lifted her pocketbook up into her lap. Ginter looked at her quizzically.

“Well, she asked, “
are
we getting out or not?”

He turned back to the intersection. “No,” he said. “You’re right. That won’t do. I won’t kill him.
At least, not here.
I need a better plan.”

Pamela turned her gaze to the pamphleteer. Three Hispanic men approached him. The man seemed to recognize them as he smiled and extended his right hand. But one of the Hispanic men began yelling and calling the pamphleteer names.
“You son of a bitch.
Why, you are a Communist!”

Another shouted, “What are you doing?”

Ginter checked the men again.
Only three.
Not the ten to twelve as claimed in the memoirs.

Several pedestrians paused on the sidewalk as the confrontation continued. The three men were screaming, “Communist!” and “Liar!”

Others took up the shout and began jeering, telling the man to go back to
Russia
.

Ginter saw one of the Hispanic men remove his own eyeglasses and hand them to a companion. The pamphleteer lowered his own arms and yelled, “Hey Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me.” Another of the three grabbed the pamphleteer and then grabbed the pamphlets and threw them into the air. They scattered in the light breeze.

The pamphleteer began yelling in the face of one of his tormenters. When a
New Orleans
patrol car approached the intersection Ginter slouched down in his seat.

A second cruiser pulled up and after a brief conversation all four men were handcuffed and shoved into the back of the second cruiser. Lights off, the two cruisers pulled away.