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CHAPTER 19
1
George de Mohrenschildt made his grand entrance on the afternoon of September fifteenth, a dark and
rainy Saturday. He was behind the wheel of a coffee-colored Cadillac right out of a Chuck Berry song.
With him was a man I knew, George Bouhe, and one I didn’t—a skinny whip of a guy with a fuzz of
white hair and the ramrod back of a fellow who’s spent a good deal of time in the military and is still
happy about it. De Mohrenschildt went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. I dashed
to get the distance mike.
When I came back with my gear, Bouhe had a folded-up playpen under his arm, and the militarylooking
guy had an armload of toys. De Mohrenschildt was empty-handed, and mounted the steps in
front of the other two with his head up and his chest thrown out. He was tall and powerfully built.
His graying hair was combed slantwise back from his broad forehead in a way that said—to me, at
least—look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. For I am GEORGE.
I plugged in the tape recorder, put on the headphones, and tilted the mike-equipped bowl across
the street.
Marina was out of sight. Lee was sitting on the couch, reading a thick paperback by the light of the
lamp on the bureau. When he heard footsteps on the porch, he looked up with a frown and tossed his
book on the coffee table. More goddam expats, he might have been thinking.
But he went to answer the knock. He held out his hand to the silver-haired stranger on his porch,
but de Mohrenschildt surprised him—and me—by pulling Lee into his arms and bussing him on both
cheeks. Then he held him back by the shoulders. His voice was deep and accented—German rather
than Russian, I thought. “Let me look at a young man who has journeyed so far and come back with
his ideals intact!” Then he pulled Lee into another hug. Oswald’s head just showed above the bigger
man’s shoulder, and I saw something even more surprising: Lee Harvey Oswald was smiling.
2
Marina came out of the baby’s room with June in her arms. She exclaimed with pleasure when she saw
Bouhe, and thanked him for the playpen and what she called, in her stilted English, the “child’s
playings.” Bouhe introduced the skinny man as Lawrence Orlov—Colonel Lawrence Orlov, if you
please—and de Mohrenschildt as “a friend of the Russian community.”
Bouhe and Orlov went to work setting the playpen up in the middle of the floor. Marina stood with
them, chatting in Russian. Like Bouhe, Orlov couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the young Russian
mother. Marina was wearing a smock top and shorts showcasing legs that went up forever. Lee’s smile
was gone. He was retreating into his usual gloom.
Only de Mohrenschildt wouldn’t let him. He spotted Lee’s paperback, sprang to the coffee table,
and picked it up. “Atlas Shrugged?” Speaking just to Lee. Completely ignoring the others, who were
admiring the new playpen. “Ayn Rand? What is a young revolutionary doing with this?”
“Know your enemy,” Lee said, and when de Mohrenschildt burst into a hearty roar of laughter,
Lee’s smile resurfaced.
“And what do you make of Miss Rand’s cri de coeur?” That struck a cord when I played the tape