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.I satdown, and he handcuffed me to the cooler, then rummaged around in it andoffered me a Coke.I said no, but he opened it and pressed it into my freehand.Then he shook a pill out of a bottle and held it out for me to take.Ididn't make an issue of it.It was a little yellow pill like aspirin forchildren, but very bitter.The van drove off down Harvard Street, away from the river andBoston.After a few blocks my vision started to blur and I felt a littlesick.I drank some more of the Coke and then dropped the can, on the verge ofvomiting, but then I went totally limp and couldn't keep my head up or my eyesopen.With my head vibrating against the cold window my last thought wasTwenty years ago I would have paid good money for this shit.CHAPTER NINE-JACOBTHE FEELING IS like deja vu inside out: You should know something, remembersomething, but you don't.There's just a hole there.Whatever kind ofmagicking Foley pulled on me, it worked absolutely.They show me his picture,and it means nothing to me.Yet Ispent dozens of hours talking to the man, hundreds of hours studying him, andeven went to Europe with him.Europe is the horror.Not his erasing my memory-no, he was gentle with me.It was the videotape we got from theFrench police, through theStirett:the Bulgarian secret agent who, after shooting his companion four times in theheart, had shot himself in the head; his skull on the left shattered anddribbling brains, his eyeball extruded and lolling on his cheek-but still he was miraculously alive.In a rambling melange ofFrench, Russian, Turkish, and Bulgarian he told how Foley had ordered him andthe other agent to go on a long train ride, as far as their money would takethem, and then walk out of town to where they would not be seen, and die.Forseven hours they knew they were riding to self-inflicted death, and they coulddo nothing to prevent it.Perhaps not "nothing." A bullet to the brain evidently broke the spell.The agent died during the filming, while the doctors were working on him.Langley has sent out a team of forensic specialists to assist in the autopsy.Maybe they'll find a drug.Page 29ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlWhat Foley did to me was comic by comparison.I woke up inOrsay, a suburb of Paris, in bed with a strange woman, with a red-winehangover beyond epic proportions.I had been drinking-guzzling, actuall y-forthree days, singlehandedly killing a case of a Burgundy that I find here inBoston runs eighty dollars a bottle.The woman said we had metin a Left Bank bistro, and one thing had led to another.She was worried aboutme, barely able to stand up but flashing a fat roll of francs, and brought mehome with her; I evidently drank compulsively from dawn till dark until thethree days were up.She said it was a hilarious time.I wish I could remembersomething of what went on.Idon't suppose Foley was entirely responsible for that particular amnesia.By this time the grotesque videotape had made its way toWashington, and the proper connections had been made, and the police all overFrance were on the lookout for my body.(My passport had wound up in a mailboxat Dulles International, with Foley's fingerprints all over it.) When Istaggered into the gendarmerie inOrsay, the police quite properly acted as if they'd seen a ghost, andunfortunately repaid my benefactress by throwing her in le slammer for severalhours, over my protests.I had written down her address, though, and mailedher all my leftover francs, about five hundred dollars' worth-God knows whereand how Foley got them; my own traveler's checks were untouched.TheStirett had also sent copies of the tape to the Bulgarian andSoviet authorities.The Russians made an initial loud noise and then saidnothing."Someone"-the French did not give their sources-had seen Fol ey leavethe hotel with the two Bulgarians and then return an hour or so later, alone.Then he spent some time with me in the hotel bar, where he was seen to slip mesome cash.Then he walked out of the hotel, into the Metro, and was never seenagain.From this side, all we know is that he landed in Dulles November16, having booked first-class passage on the Concorde in my name.Paid cash.He set off the metal detector but convinced the guard that he had apacemaker, which is not true.APeacemaker is more likely; we know he's an expert pistol shot and has at leasttwo unregistered weapons.From Dulles he might have taken the subway straighttoNational and stepped on the shuttle to Boston-no ID required with cash, ofcourse-or to anyplace on the East Coast.Or he could have rented a car anddriven to Akron or Tulsa.We know he did call home, but not necessarily from alocal phone.That's where it gets complicated in an especially ugly way.Whenthe videotape finally found its way to Washington and the computer identifiedFoley as being my section's responsibility, somebody ran back the tapes of thephone tap and their apartment bugs.Silence for the past day and a half.Theafternoon of the sixteenth, though, we could hear the apartment being brokeninto.The "burglars" said nothing; just waited in place until Mrs.Foley camehome.There was a brief struggle; they evidently tied her up and gagged her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]