He found Neely Street. He thought about people spending their lives in a place like this. Lee sat in this hole reading obscure economics, mumbo-jumbo theory of the left. It was sad, interesting, boring, stupid. It was also infuriating. It hadn't occurred to George that seeing where Lee and Marina lived would make him angry. There was something serious and unsettling about this kind of squalor. Everything was rickety, makeshift, slanting. Everything slanted. It was repellent, not much better than a slum in Port-au-Prince, and George realized he could never again be amused by Lee, by the boy with the odd past and the out-of-place manner.

Marina and Lee came to the door. George said to Lee in his biggest voice, "So my friend. How come you missed that son of a bitch?"

He waited for the sure laugh. But they retreated to the living room. There was a shrinking in the air. Obviously the joke was not so funny in this household.

He handed over the Easter bunny and told them he was going to Haiti, long-term business, let's keep in touch.

He watched Lee's face change. He felt bad about that. He was leaving the boy without someone to go to with his ideas and his troubles. Marina went to the kitchen to make tea and George talked in her general direction about his vision of Haiti. Hotels, casinos, hydroelectric plants, food-processing plants. Lee sat on the sofa. His peculiar smile appeared, the little smirk that made George think of a comedian in a silent film with the screen going dark around his head.

"So someone finally smiles. It's a very delayed reaction. I walk in the door with a joke, no one makes a sound. I think I'm in the valley of lost souls. Now I see a smile peeping out. What is so amusing? Please. Inform me."

"I sent you a picture," Lee said.

"What picture?"

"It's the kind of picture a person looks at and maybe he understands something he didn't understand before."

"Sounds mysterious," George said.

"Maybe he sees the truth about someone."

Driving home George thought about the heavy schedule of appointments he had in New York and Washington, preparing the way for various aspects of the Haitian venture. He had the Bureau of Mines, Lehman Trading, Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, the Pentagon, the ICA, the CIA. The last in fact was strictly social, lunch with an old Agency friend, Larry Par-menter, a Bay of Pigs character but otherwise decent and amusing, a chap who knew his wines.

He sat at his desk opening and reading three days of mail. He came to the envelope addressed by Lee Oswald. Just a snapshot inside. It showed Lee dressed in black, holding a rifle in one hand, some newspapers in the other. Am I interested or bored, thought George. He looked at the reverse side. It was inscribed To my friend George from Lee Oswald.

George checked the postmark on the envelope. April 9. One day before the attempt on General Walker.

He looked at the second inscription. This was in Russian, clearly in Marina's handwriting and evidently written without Lee's knowledge, sneaked in before he sealed and mailed the envelope- a private message from the wife of the poseur to the sophisticated older friend.

Hunter of fascists-ha ha hall!

6 September

Wayne Elko sat at the window of a shotgun shack in the bayous west of New Orleans. There was no glass in the windows, just dusty plastic stripping, and he looked at three blurry men taking target practice in a mixed stand of cypress and willow.

There were other shacks in the area, here and there, used by weekenders who came out frogging and crawfishing.

Early mist. The gunfire sounded small and distant, little popgun compressions in the heavy air.

David Ferrie, a magnetic presence, a humorous master of games, was shooting at tin cans with a.22.

The swag-belly Cuban, Raymo, had a modified Winchester he liked to break down and reassemble, running a patch through the bore, sandpapering the stock.

The third man, named Leon, worked the bolt on an ancient carbine; sighted, fired, worked the bolt.

This was a new and hastily assembled camp, Ferrie explained, which is why the lack of creature comforts. The regular setup was at Lacombe, nearer New Orleans, where a number of anti-Castro factions had trained in guerrilla tactics until federal agents raided, grabbing a huge store of dynamite and bomb casings. This project would be kept small and restricted. Speak to no one. Respect the environment. Wait for the moment.

Wayne thought these were rules that verged on mystical.

He knew they weren't here just to fire weapons. T-Jay wanted them sequestered. Raymo and Wayne especially. The business was sorting itself out and he wanted his shooters wrapped tight, where he could find them.

Wayne stood outside wearing Levis, his bare chest pale and veined. He was growing his hair down over his neck, a rat's tail he painstakingly braided. He went barefoot over the moist ground. There was a storm hanging close, a stillness and metallic light, pressure building. The bird noise was fretful and spooked.

Frank Vasquez was back in the Everglades spying on Alpha 66.

The others stood talking by a fallen tree. Wayne wore a hunting knife in a leather sheath clipped to his belt, just for the general look of it. Ferrie smiled at the sight of his bare feet.

"Here is a man who has no fear."

"I never understand about people and snakes," Wayne said. "Like what harm do they intend? They never touch me. I've had incidents with snakes where they never touch me."

"It's not they touch you," Raymo said. "It's stepping on them. Not seeing where you step."

"Copperhead," Leon said.

"I have the primitive fear," Ferrie said. "All my fears are primitive. It's the limbic system of the brain. I've got a million years of terror stored up in there."

He wore a crushed sun hat, the expressive brows like clown paint over his eyes. He handed Wayne the rifle. They watched him walk to the lopsided dock and climb into the skiff. His car was parked on a dirt road about half a mile downstream and the skiff was the only way in and out.

They took turns firing at a silhouette target that was the onetime property of the FBI. Then they went up to the long shack for something to eat.

The first drops of rain hit the sheeting, well spaced and heavy. They sat around the table and talked about jobs, odd jobs, seasonal jobs. Wayne told them about his pool-skimming days in California. Leon described a radio plant somewhere, lathes and grinding machines, floor awash in oil, the workers' hands stained black. Raymo talked about the hands of cane-cutters, seamed with cuts, sticky and black from the juice.

This was the first time Wayne had heard Leon say more than two words. He didn't know where Leon fit in, except it was obvious he was some kind of special component with his own little twist or spin. He came and he went, carrying the Italian carbine. The others seemed to leave some space around him, like he was holy or diseased.

They talked about prisons they'd been in.

"I used to believe the great thing of Castro was the time he spent in prison," Raymo said. "He went to prison in Cuba and Mexico both. I used to say this is the man's honor and strength. He comes out of prison with authority if he is sent there for his beliefs. It is completely different in Castro's own prisons. We came out of La Cabana with anger and disgust. We were the worms of the CIA."

"They sent me to prison in the military," Leon said.

"What for?"

"Politics. Just like Fidel. I spent a night in jail in New Orleans a month ago. Politics."

"I sat in a lockup for three days," Wayne said. "Our launch was intercepted about ten minutes out of the Keys. Violating the neutrality act. It was T-Jay that got us out. He fixed it somehow. The charges were dropped nicey-nicey."